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

If the tribunal concludes that SP cannot work in the NHS again after this, they can award her loss of earnings up to retirement age.

They can also award damages for injury to feelings caused by the employer's behaviour, which can include their behaviour in the tribunal. This can be up to £58,700 and can go beyond this in exceptional circumstances.

In discrimination cases, they can also award aggravated damages where the discriminatory behaviour was particularly bad.

I believe the highest award in a discrimination case was £4.6M. The highest award in the 2023/24 statistics was just under £1M in a sex discrimination case.

I'm not saying SP will get that much. I don't know how much she will get and I'm not going to hazard a guess.

Jim Borwick was always scheduled to give evidence today.

It'll be a last-minute application by NHSF to submit documentation related to spergs and speggs.

Oh my God, this is batshit!

Deleted as @CriticalCondition explains

I really want to know what they did/did not find on the phone.

JR - msgs between you and colleague, 'Trans doctor
was in CR this evening when I went in' Reply OMG 'PSML'. Pissing myself laughing. You and colleague were both laughing at DU.
SP - I believe that we were laughing about the colleague that I had previously asked if DU was going to use the female CR and thought he was winding
me up about it
JR - you were both mocking DU because trans
SP - no
JR - she said PMSL, you were both laughing about the TW in the CR
SP - no, we were more surprised that DU was using CR,
JR - you were making light of the fact that a TW was in CR,
SP - I was not making light of it
JR - you were, making jokes about it,
SP - Charlene knew that I wasn't happy about it, we weren't making light of it, it was about Chris who told us it would happen

The PMSL is from a colleague, not from Sandie, but makes sense to me in context. I infer from the emails that another colleague (Chris) had said earlier "[Dr Upton] will be sharing your changing room" - Sandie and colleague have said "you're having us on" or similar.

So when Dr Upton actually turned up in the women's changing room later that day, their text exchange is their reaction to that, having had the "no way, you're having us on!!" conversation earlier that day.

Is that the same Charlotte?

Charlotte Myles whose profile on LinkedIn says Service Manager at NHS Fife got a BSc and an MSc at Manchester Met and an MBA at Wrexham University.

Perhaps it has finally dawned on BU or JR that she can't possibly act in the best interests of both respondents. That would throw a serious spanner in the works.

Begging to protect what is left of her professional reputation I guess. I think her e-mails are all we actually need.

I don't know what to do with myself now

I am hoping that whatever is being heard in private is not KS's testimony. I really want to hear her explain why she sent the emails she did.

Favourable to her as a witness for the respondent precisely because she exposed the witch hund AND exposed her own limited understanding and therefore detrimental decisions. Naomi didn't need to go hard on her, she just let her speak and the rest is for submissions.

Ok I'm going to risk jumping in the shower now and what's the bet it all kicks off when I do

Surely, surely, there's enough public interest.

Sorry to admit it but every time I see "KS" on this thread, my first thought is Keir Starmer

I dont think we can read anything into starting with a private session. A lot of days have done so - dealing with technical questions, rejigging order of witnesses etc. In this case further discussion of The Statement is a definite possibly.

@Hoardasurass

This is very bad planning on your part. You should already be cleansed and fragrant with libations and snacks aplenty to hand.

prh47bridge
Was the £4.6 M Michalak? Where she was left with substantial cognitive problems that affected every part of her life? And she was a consultant?

Thank you.

I've been folding laundry with the laptop propped on a surface, regularly hitting 'refresh' on TT/Nitter. I'm going to be able to fold things properly now

TT has just said - first post in 37mins - 'slight delay this AM'

Catching up more carefully this morning. DU really was pushing at an open door when it came to Sandie, as KS already had her marked down as a bigot.

Thought the comparators NC is using are interesting in terms of weighing up whose rights end up paramount in a situation such as these eg othering of trans v othering of women of other faiths, need to protect privacy of trans/no need for them to 'out themselves' v women having to 'out' experiences of sexual assault or risk being labelled a bigot.

I hope that Fife NHS is an outlier but you could make a reasonable case that any woman avoiding a changing room with a trans-id'd man will face far greater discrimination / harassment / bullying in the workplace.

wail, I have to nip out to sort out some stuff for aged uncle, damn you sandwich generation.

BBL, as the youngsters say (learnt that phrase off of that tellybox)

TBH, if the cross examination of a witness is going to be a blood sport, which that of KS appears likely to be given the unredeemable awfulness of those emails, I'd almost rather it took place out of sight.

Brazilian butt lift?

Can you imagine if he took the stand? He would definitely be...
<nasal voice> "I can't be 100% certain of my chromosomes because they've never been checked and actually some ladies do have penises"