NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #34

[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-sil
ence-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
Thread 33: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5376608-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-33

The herald or the courier? I'm getting confused

There's no charge to read the herald's live feed. link here.
www.heraldscotland.com/news/25327862.live-sandie-peggie-tribunal-employment-tribunal-resumes/

Another Ms here 🙋 Married 20 years. Although I took my husband's surname, because I preferred it to mine 😄

The article does not appear to be protected, so anyone can edit it even if you don't have an Wikipedia account. If you do want to correct it, remember that one of the principles of Wikipedia is that articles must be from a neutral point of view. It would therefore be wrong to make this into something that purely supports the GC side. It should be a neutral account of the case so far. At this stage, Fife's version of what happened should be reported on Wikipedia uncritically, notwithstanding the fact that the evidence so far shows that it bears only a distant relationship to the truth.

Both have been great tbf. Worth both is you are interested in case. Also just entertaining if not from the area to see the local context from other content on site!

If life is at risk and this is not reported accordingly, then the people involved in not reporting that should be investigated, Ms Myles said.

BOOOOM

She's just said that those who made the allegations of patient safety about Peggie in the suspension hearing but failed officially report should have been investigated themselves.

This means that there is a clear reason to actually suspend the relevant parties now because NHS Fife have fucked up in not treating all staff fairly and have not properly investigated these particular allegations.

This suggest, that even after the conclusion of this tribunal there will be disciplinary fall out - especially if this is explicitly meantioned in any ruling.

from herald
2:41pm
Ms Myles agreed that it would have been humiliating for Ms Peggie to have this suspension to placed on her.
Ms Myles said Ms Peggie was "very upset" about the suspension and Ms Myles said she completely sympathised with the nurse, who was concerned that she had no previous incidents in her three decades of experience.
She said it was "not her intention" to humiliate Ms Peggie by placing restrictions on her return to work.

I'm really losing the thread now -

Apparently competent CM thought there was no evidence for any of the charges, and that it was a serious error to only report concerns about clinical practice long after the event. She was confident that SP should return to work.

But it took over a year to complete the disciplinary investigation?

Also, I'm beginning to suspect JR's line of defence is that NHS Fife is not to blame but individuals within it. I think she will argue in her submission that NHS Fife's attempts to follow procedure were thwarted by certain individuals. I wonder if Jamie Doyle will appear as one and definitely Kate Searle. This is why CM is a great witness for her. There is obviously lots of room to argue that those individuals do represent NHS Fife in their actions but at least it would be a defence in the face of the indefensible.

I think she also may be gearing up that defence for DU too. That he is not guilty of harassment etc because it was KS, JD, LC and ED...guv. He didn't tell them to do those things....

From TT

NC: Always humiliating to be suspended.
CM: Can agree with that - I know SP was very upset, with her long career, no incidents, can completely empathise with that.
NC: Bound to be humiliating to have conditions on the RtW implying you can't do your job?
CM: Was not my intention - as I've explained, that was about following the policies more than the invididual.
NC: I do have a few more Qs but perhaps this would be a good time to take a break?
J: Yes we will take short break

[BREAK]

Big Sond seems relieved, his feet are braw comfy in his usual baffies. The size 12 erse-kickers lie unneeded in his chambers in their Hoggs of Fife bag.

Can’t stand Ms or Mrs, one of the things that got me through writing up my PhD was the prospect of being able to ditch both and be Dr.

Yes, I am an annoying phd wanker.

You've no idea how much I laughed at Pete the Plumber getting a day aff 😂

My main concern is the repeat of Pink News’ allegations that “anti-trans” accounts “posted hundreds of times in support of Peggie while misgendering Upton, with many referring to her as a "thing" and "mentally unwell".[16]

The reference is to the PN article, but I can’t see evidence in that article that accounts called Upton those things. I can’t access the talk page because I think I registered with an old email address.

She’ll be first against the wall, comes the baby pink and blue revolution!

Also, if CM was saying all this back in March last year, can someone please explain to me why Sandie Peggie was only clearly of the misconduct charges this week??!

Unless there was still an element of vindictiveness going on.

This should all have been cleared up at this point! There wasn't anything further to progress.

Both! We should be happy to pay so little for such good journalism!

And it implies proceedings were moved to protect Uptons team and Fife, not SP

There was a big battle over the Forstater case, with one editor repeatedly removing any reports of criticism of the original tribunal decision on the grounds that it was "POV pushing", effectively only allowing one POV. The editor in question has been permanently banned. So be prepared for a battle if you try to fix this article, but it is a battle you can win.

Way back in the mists of time, many threads ago, there was reporting of SP's convo with DU in the changing room that "other members of staff", or similar phraseology, were not happy with him using their changing room.

As NC is not a KC, she is a junior. So what we have on SP's side is a senior junior (NC) leading a junior junior (CE). CE is there to assist NC and learn. It is not uncommon to find a senior junior leading a junior junior. Equally, it is not uncommon for a KC to handle a case without a junior. The only rule is that a junior barrister cannot lead a KC.

Charlotte Elves is no typical junior barrister: I quote from her Chambers bio:

Before coming to the Bar, Charlotte was the Singer Fellow in Law and Ethics at Exeter College, University of Oxford, where she taught across a range of subjects, including Trusts, Jurisprudence, Medical Law and Criminal Law. Her research focused on the regulation of emerging technologies. She has published on issues ranging from cryptocurrencies, to gene editing and
the regulation of human embryo research. During her academic career, Charlotte was involved in policy making at a national level, providing evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, and at an international level at the Council of Europe.

We're talking about two exceptional legal minds on the same team. JR has never stood a chance.

Its not a great defence.

Where was management?

They just let all these idiots run around for months and decided not to take disciplinary action at any point?

Come on!

The best line you have here is then gross neglience. And a call of neglience doesn't actually absolve NHS Fife of responsibility.

I don't think an organization can generally get away with blaming "individuals" - after all, every organization is really nothing but a collection of individuals. The furniture, buildings and machinery don't make decisions. When employees turn up for work, they are the organization in a very real sense.

Even if an organization provides clear written policies, training and oversight, it's still responsible for what it's employees get up to by not following those policies, up to the point (I think - @prh47bridge will correct me) where the employee can no longer be said to be acting on their employers behalf. (I vaguely remember learning about a case concerning the company's vicarious liabilty for a van driver who hurt someone driving a company van to do a personal errand).

TT's afternoon tweets part 1

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1947274524195537020.html

Me and DH talked about that yesterday. This case reminds me very much of the Jo Phoenix ET where almost every one of the respondents came across as incompetent. Must rummage out the ruling on that one but recall it wasn't pretty for the OU.

Same, never married, went from Miss to Dr in my 50s. Becoming Dr Me was definitely the most motivating thing at times.