NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #35

[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
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
Thread 34: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5377387-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-34

🤣🤣 I wondered the same about your name, and scrolled up to check… your username 🤣🤣

Fife times https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/national/25330495.medics-objecting-sandie-peggies-return-warned-culpability-tribunal-told/

I think that is a little naive. DU, it turns out, is not just a junior doctor.

It's all about privilege isn't it. And superiority. This with privilege sneering at those beneath them. It's not just a Dr/nurse thing, let's include managers and IB feeling so much cleverer than SP. Content in their middle/upper class, degree-having, naice home owning superiority, certain they know so much more about rights and equality than the nurse whose class, intelligence and accent doesn't match theirs.

She isn’t Scottish either so is a real outsider.

Comment on the participants generally is different from observation of the tribunal process.

I complained to the BBC about their coverage of the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal - this is their response:

Thank you for getting in touch about this BBC News Online article:
Nurse confronted trans doctor in 'unacceptable' manner, tribunal hears - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g2xz2wwwwo

We note your comments about our reporting and raised your concerns with senior news editors.

To allow us to reply promptly to your concerns, and to ensure we use our licence fee resources as efficiently as possible, we’re sending this response to everyone. We hope it addresses your main points.

The article reflected developments at an Employment Tribunal Service
hearing which is being held in public and which centres on an issue that
we believe to be of significant public interest. This article was not a
report about the internal NHS Fife disciplinary
proceedings, during which Sandie Peggie was cleared of gross
misconduct, as we covered this in an earlier piece here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2mp5jley8o

Our coverage of the resumption of the tribunal, which started in February, has been fair, accurate and duly impartial, reflecting the associated issues and arguments put forward by both sides. This piece forms part of our ongoing coverage.

Headlines by their nature can only be a summary of an article and have limited space. We provide further details in the following paragraphs and when read in conjunction with the headline they provide an accurate report. While noting that you take a different view of our coverage, we do not propose making any changes to the article.

We’re sorry if you remain unhappy. As we’ve indicated above, we have shared your concerns with senior news editors.

I note CM said DU took the news re: Sandie’s return to work “better than I’d expected “.
She then clarified that “There were a few tears, it was a difficult conversation”.

Presumably she’d been expecting at the very least the full on histrionics that Kate Sarle had to deal with on Christmas Eve. I wonder what made her think that?

I sense a wealth of understatement hanging in the air.

"Ai'm from Edinburgh, my parents are in the SNP-funded class, I'm only spending time with you oiks (please insert Fife version here) while I have to, and I'll school you while I'm here. Women, know your place."

There comes a point where the risk in allowing the threads to continue outweighs any revenue they bring in. Bringing JR's parents (or any other close relative) into it increases the risk.

JR's smears against SP - based on nothing more than unfounded gossip - remind me of the Eva Michalek case where a group of male doctors wanted a female doctor pushed out. They actively decided to "throw everything" at it and encouraged spurious allegations and "coaxed" staff to make complaints.

JR seems determined to throw the kitchen sink at this case by bringing up gossip and rumour that may have circulated because of SP's suspension that may have no connection with reality.

This happened in a (government) organisation I worked for in the 1980s that lost a ET on the basis of racial and sex discrimination. There were all sorts of rumours flying around about what had occurred/been said - often dramatic tales, but all of them completely fabricated. The truth turned out to be infinitely more stupid from management.

Best tell off the poster who did it, then.

Of course it's strategic. It's up there with 'accidentally' leaving a sensitive document on the photocopier. The fact that things shouldn't happen doesn't mean they don't happen. This exercise in persecution has been aided by a lack of due process. Which brings me back, yet again, to the question 'why?'.

I wish people wouldn't throw around slander like this. I'm sure that she is simply doing her job and seeking to conscientiously represent her clients.

In that he has academic parents and a privileged upbringing? You may be right, but (a) that isn't unusual amongst Dr's and (b) my experience is that A&E is not a junior doc placement with a lot of time for personal chitchat, so would be surprised if his background or parentage was discussed or known. My experience may not be representative of Fife of course - perhaps its a quiet department and Fife is a big well-connected village! But i do think being a TRANS Dr and one if the sacred caste that must never be offended strikes me as much more important motivation for the unwarranted support he received.

The abstract alone is astonishing:

"Abstract
This thesis is an autoethnographic exploration and articulation of aspects of my lived experience of the longterm impact of professional abuse. It is a context-dependent single case study written from a researcher-participant-counsellor perspective. In my review of the literature I demonstrate the challenges of researching and documenting the direct experiences of women who have been sexually exploited by male professionals. These challenges stem from our natural human tendency to deny traumatic experience, and from the prevailing culture of many social institutions which continues to have the effect of silencing women’s voices and discrediting women’s experience. The methodological approach I have taken in this thesis is evocative autoethnography. I have chosen this approach in order to document and analyse my present embodied experiences of remembering past abuse, continuing feelings of loss, and unfulfilled longing for resolution and release. I explore the relationship between my past and present selves in context, and consider the therapeutic possibilities of combining memory work, lifewriting, poetry, and imagination to create texts of remembering and re-remembering, to reclaim both what is and what might have been."

https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/31293

i said exact same and then accidentally posted on wrong thread. I hope they are all just negligent rather than malicious.

I will request a deletion of my post about Carrie Applegarth's thesis if that is problematic. I asked because I'd like to read it. I have a number of mixed feelings about that. I have never seen an embargo like that and it does seem convenient that the father is Director of Library in the institution that it's been embargoed.

It also just feels really sad that the author had meaningful things to say, and would have put an incredible amount of work and invested a great deal of herself in that thesis. And it feels in some way that she is yet another woman cheated in this scenario. Maybe she's cheated herself, or maybe its none of my business, but it feels sad that her thesis is lost to her in its public form, probably for the rest of her lifetime.

Oh for sure, with the sacred caste of mens. I just got the feeling that there was even more going on here.

But anyway, that will not be a question for the tribunal! KS is on tomorrow...

I've been a lurker on these threads for quite a while.

I'm a public sector audit manager and many things concern me.

But the thing that concerns me most at the moment is that somebody left confidential paperwork on CM's desk, which included personal staff details where anyone else could access it. That is a clear Information Security Breach and should have been reported to the trusts Data Protection Officer. You simply cannot leave identifiable personal information out where anyone can access it without breaching GDPR rules.

These people are clearly idiots.

These people are clearly idiots.

The judge can use this as the final report.

I have defended JR on that basis, I understand and respect the duty of advocates to their clients.

But when she repeated allegations that SP is racist and homophobic (towards her own daughter!) that JR knows are untrue, as Fife have already cleared SP of the allegations, I changed my mind.
That was nasty and making slanderous accusations that you know to be untrue is surely ..what was that word? outwith the bounds of conscientiousness.

Exactly. Therefore your “why?” is straightforward - to cover their backs.

I am a senior manager in public sector and have been in discussions around managing people out with minimal risk to the business. It is absolutely the riskiest move you can make.

Sloppy data practices are the lesser evil than that data exposing you to legal claims. You hide the data, or simply never bring it into existence. Off the record chats over the phone, paper notes etc. A telling off from the ICO is minor compared to the embarrassment of losing an ET or being exposed in a Freedom of Information Request.

Indeed. I've just subscribed form another area of the Celtic fringe. 😉

@MarieDeGournay
I'm keeping a tally of the outwiths now, thank you 😂