NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #33

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July and then there will be 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing will end on 30 July.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February.
Access to view the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected] by 5pm on Wednesday 9 July. Detailed instructions were provided here:

drive.google.com/file/d/16-9POEZ7yHWUr6EmbfquJZO18Gv78bSm/view

The hearing is being live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.ph/WSSjg.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Links to previous threads #1 to #29 can be found in the header of thread #30.

Thread 30: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375337-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-30
Thread 31: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5375819-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-31
Thread 32: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5376072-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-32

Were the comments made by a man? Horrible comments without any evidence.

I don’t like the insinuations against NC made by NHS Fife and feel the same when used against JR (well except the philosophy joke @guinnessguzzler !)

The damn broke in February when one of the Scottish papers said 'we will not use female pronouns for Dr U'. It was a trickle, then a flood.

I recollect that at the beginning one reporter (BBC?) was seen wearing a pink and blue scarf, and we debated whether it was symbolic or not. My guess would be that it was, and that everyone thought that Sandy Peggie would be easily discredited and it would all be over in Fife and Upton's favour. And then Naomi got to work......

Does anyone know the approximate date or which thread these events are please?

She'll be needing that horse after this!

That's the case I highlighted in the first post of this thread.

Returning to Jane Russell for a moment, am I right in thinking she’s actually Lady Russell?

Place marking

Because of timing and hitting the public mood at just the right time.

The public have an interest in public finances, waste of public finances, a growing frustration with DEI bollocks, an adoration of the NHS and a growing awareness of the utter bullshit that is gender identity.

It's the corner between multiple cultural values in the UK: liberal values (free speech, holding power to account and proper ideas of equality/justice), socialist values (particularly how the NHS sits in that and the responsibility to all), the blue collar hard working values that dislike idle hands (grifters and wanting value for money).

Somehow GI manages to piss off and undermine all these ideas all at once. Which is quite the feat.

Even if you want to be kind, at some point, you go wtf that's not cool because you value one of the cultural values above highly and you suddenly peak.

You only don't peak because you don't hold those values higher. Thus those who have status and wealth are least likely to see the problem.

WTF- I'll go do some research on that one.

I too thought it was a joke about her riding through London

Initial stooshie - May

https://news.sky.com/story/nhs-fife-rebuked-by-watchdog-over-handling-of-transgender-row-tribunal-cost-requests-13376308

https://www.foi.scot/commissioner-frustrated-nhs-fifes-handling-employment-tribunal-cost-requests

Poking the bear - July

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-courier-advertiser-fife-edition/20250707/281565181768424

https://www.nhsfife.org/news-updates/latest-news/2025/07/statement-on-the-recommencement-of-the-employment-tribunal/

https://www.foi.scot/new-questions-over-nhs-fife-compliance

(Edited to add link)

I have traced back the confusion around whether KS is a witness or not. In the courier she is above the main list in a discursive comment and so when the list was copied and pasted it looked like she wasn’t on it:

Dr Kate Searle, Dr Upton’s boss, will be grilled at the tribunal as expected.
Ms Peggie’s lawyers unsuccessfully tried to add Dr Searle as a third respondent to the case alongside NHS Fife and Dr Upton.
Other NHS witnesses still to appear are:

• Louise Curran, senior charge nurse
• Maggie Currer, consultant in emergency medicine
• Peter Donaldson, information security manager
• Angela Glancey, clinical nurse manager
• Anne Hamilton, HR adviser
• Lauren Harris, senior charge nurse
• Lottie Myles, service manager
• Lindsey Nicoll, emergency nurse practitioner
• Elspeth Pitt, consultant in emergency medicine
• Fiona Wishart, emergency nurse practitioner

I don't want to be rude, but if everyone posts to 'placemark' then the threads fill up twice as fast. I can't keep up tbh. You can just 'watch' the thread and it will show up on your Threads I'm Watching list.

Also, the laugh reaction isn't coming back but you can "love" react or post to say you found it funny.

And yes, I'm aware I'm adding to the post count by posting this

I also think the Scottish media have done particularly well on this. I suspect they have learned from the farcical sturgeon years, that they now need to be braver in pointing at the emperors new clothes. And that it pays. The picture of Isla Bryson is leggings I suspect sold more papers than anything else that year.

I'm a bit behind and don't know if this has been discussed, but it's worth pointing out that this situation is even more important for SP than it might be for a non-nurse. SP has to renew her professional registration on 31/12/2025, which includes revalidation. Revalidation is a process which involves:

•accrual of practice hours - fine for SP despite the suspension because she's full time. If she had been part time, her suspension then sick leave could have caused her to fall short of her practice hours.

•5 pieces of practice related feedback. This could prove tricky if there is a general opposition to SP from team members because of the legal action.

•5 written reflective accounts. This will be ok.

•A reflective discussion. This could be tricky if the discussion partner wants to reflect on contentious issues.

•A declaration of health and character. "You must declare if you have been charged, convicted of any criminal offence (including a conditional discharge) or issued with a formal caution.

You also need to declare if you have been subject to any adverse determination that your fitness to practise is impaired by a professional or regulatory body (including those responsible for regulating or licensing a health and social care profession)."

At this stage, everything is informal, but at one stage I think there were discussions about referring to the fitness to practice panel at the NMC.

•Confirmation - an individual (preferably line manager) has to confirm you have met all the revalidation requirements. Given the bias against SP, this could have been difficult.

So this tribunal has been vital for SP to clear her name, above and beyond the need for an 'ordinary person' to do so. Failure to clear her name would quite literally be career ending.

If there's to be a battle between Tunnocks and Leibnitz - I'm on the Leibnitz side.

<ducks>

How depressing. All of those witnesses, bar one, are women. Not one of them appear to have shown any concern for Sandie, who worked there for thirty years. So keen to smear her, but not to check on her welfare.

I doubt it. They moved it from Edinburgh to Dundee rather than do that previously and the outcry would be HUGE

Looks like NC and Apprentice CE will be kept going in work for a wee while then.
I'm sure they'll be plenty more cases to come.

This is really interesting on the internal investigation.

Four questions to SP about pronoun usage! BU appears to have completely rowed back on the ‘misconduct’ allegations, downplaying them to ‘indications that there might be an issue in the future’. I wonder if he realised the seriousness of what he was saying and the implications for himself of taking months to raise it. Also looks like his wife and mother have been enabling him in his hunt for offence and the potential for ‘sad times’.

And the chief instigator, Jamie Doyle, a man, not called.

Agree @Taytoface re: media interest. Any public body will tell anyone who'll listen that the media love to hate them. I remember this being a stated part of the induction when I was (very briefly) employed by City of Edinburgh Council. I think it is the combination of complete incompetence to the point of hilarity mixed with total arrogance that has really set them off. For years the media has been fed the li(n)e that trans people are the underdog and it is now clear that really hasn't been the case at all.

Meanwhile it has only just occurred to me that there must be lots of jobs where your sex is mostly irrelevant, ie no changing rooms, no specific uniform, no potential for service users / clients / patients to request same sex provision, even roles where you mainly wfh and simply use your own toilets, so it's quite interesting that Dr U found himself in a job where sex actually is something that can become relevant quite quickly. I appreciate he trained before transitioning but I do wonder a bit. In the same vein, Midrul Wadhwa could have honed in on any area of the voluntary sector yet somehow ended up in the one bit where it might have led to some controversy. I'm not quite suggesting it's deliberate but I do wonder if there is a subconscious draw there.

Those minging wee hard biscuits that could be used as throwing stars? They're like a Rich Tea biscuit (also horrible) with pretensions.

@Lougle - but surely Sandie isn't full time if her normal working pattern is weekend nights only? So she could be short, or getting close to it, on clinical hours after 18 months of this nonsense.

You're correct about all this process, of course, and it's an aspect I hadn't thought about.

There is this idea that the papers lead the public. But that's not true. The papers print what the public want.

It's a symbiotic relationship where the two forces push against either other.

The new paper barons might want certain outcomes but if the public are so turned on by a certain issue, then the baron CAN NOT do this because they know to do so isn't going to end well for them one way or another.

This particular issue has come from grass roots activism and unhappiness and has grown from there. Gradually newspapers / media who had been pushing this nonsense have been forced to back down because of public opinion.

Gender Identity is a subject which is a really good case example for showing how things actually work rather versus how we think they should work / assumed they worked.

Whilst I am very pleased and grateful that SP is suing RCN, and I feel such empathetic stress for the fact they didn’t support her I’m also quite glad they didn’t. If they had come on board they would probably have advised her to accept the beating stoically. At the very least they would not have recommended she seek out Sex Matters as her MSP did. They would have been unlikely to recommend taking it to ET given their flavour and even if they had would have been unlikely to have appointed her current solicitor and advocate.