NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #38

[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
Thread 35: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5377598-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-35
Thread 36 mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5378031-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-36
Thread 37: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5378200-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-37

I don't know the total but some of the latest disclosures were referred to yesterday as being page 729 and 730.

I suspect the larger chunk of work in the earlier stages was in a forensic analysis of a very scant initial disclosure, to find clues that would point in the direction of the missing emails.

Be fair. It's her other colleagues that she acknowledges are God, beatifically assigning sex to newborns.

The issue is not that there is a further missing email but why that email was not submitted at the same time as the chain NC is working to establish it belonged to; that it started off, in fact. It was submitted in the second lot of disclosure on April 5.

If it was indeed the email that began the chain — and all evidence including its contents (ie to paraphrase: the first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club) is hard to dispute — then what NC is seeking to establish is that there was collusion between senior managers, including witnesses, to thwart the course of justice. Ie to stitch SP up from the outset.

This is why the answer ‘you can’t prove it’ seems so telling.

It suggests they have also discussed submitting it later as a stand alone, ie not of the earlier chain — and agreeing that it would look bad for them if counsel for SP clocked that it was absent in the first iteration of disclosure but then reassured themselves that it wouldn’t matter because they wouldn’t be able to prove it. Perhaps someone has an IT pal who advises them.

The fact that there were 6 in the chain from the off, 7 when DU was added, and not one of them submitted this as part of that initial disclosure.

One reasonable argument JR could make, in my view, is that that first email was removed from the thread when DU was added because it might have been felt in appropriate to share that with him and, by accident, they only submitted the later chain rather than the original.

This, however, is rather exploded by KS claiming you can’t prove it was part of the chain. For that possible defence to work she should have said, I don’t know why it wasn’t there or, even better, someone probably removed it when DU has joined and it’s quite likely that none of us noticed.

That was not what she said however when pressed.

Either way the context is damning but I think NC is rightly incensed by the failure to disclose and seeks to substantially increase detriment if the judgement finds IB SPs favour.

It also, of course, either way almost wholly undermines the credibility of KS.

Thats so cute!! I guess the answer is yes then.. all female species have to suffer.. and now they are trying to erase us i wonder if they would like to take the down sides of being female too.. i feel like i have started the menopause and would like to offer it to Dr U if he wants 😁

Re: emails

I work for NHS in Scotland and I’ve checked today.
In a train of emails they all automatically say Re in the subject line except the initial email.
NC will be comparing this chain to other chains in Fife’s bundle

1000 new pages since Feb at least. So at least double that.

Someone may have said a large lever arch file or two.

I was in a trial with hundreds of lever arch files with four copies of each of those files. The fees alone for bundle prep.

This is relatively simple - although the fact they didn’t disclose properly is so bad - let alone deliberate concealing evidence. In Searles case I’d say guilty until proven otherwise - and very likely proof exists.

It has been submitted as part of the 2nd round of disclosure so the question of proof is around whether it started the chain or was an email on its own. The reason why establishing it was part of the chain matters is because since none of the 6 included it in the initial iteration of disclosure it demonstrates collusion.

The ba's on the slates? The game's a bogey?

v helpful @Largesso, thank you.
Do we know what the content of the email in question was? How do we know ?
I keep seeing references to ‘fight club’ and ‘foot and mouth’ but don’t know where they have come from.
( and no, I am not making the most of my ‘get shit done’ 2 hours!)

Many consultants do have a god complex, KS certainly demonstrated that yesterday by making an absolute idiot of herself and her profession. She believes she’s untouchable, she believes she has right on her side, and she’s prepared to bully anyone and everyone who stands up to her by using whatever means necessary.

The crossover between this and GI is plain to see, I can see now how powerful people readily jump on this bandwagon, it’s another power trip for them, another way for them to assert their authority. Most of us aren’t medically qualified so it’s difficult for us to question them, and most of us are led to believe that it’s because we couldn’t possibly understand GI is the reason we are against it. It’s very much from the ‘you can’t possibly understand it, but I am an expert, so just do as I say’ school of thought, which is essentially how women are treated by the medical profession. That’s why it will be so difficult to rid ourselves of it.

Everything you do on government devices is audited. Remember these are work accounts, so whatever you touch, type, send, delete etc is still reviewable by your employer. Nothing on a work device is ever truly private like a personal device because of all the enterprise monitoring.

Therefore deleted emails are accessible from the back end ie on the admin accounts. It’s not that it’s impossible to recover at all, it’s that the NHS simply doesn’t want to share it.

If you flipped this over - theoretically say the NHS wanted to find some incriminating emails sent by and deleted by SP - they would hand that over in a heartbeat as they have the power to find them and it would likely help their tribunal case.

Also in the case of the police investigating a crime, the police would be able to obtain the “deleted” emails as they have the power to execute independent searches of the hardware and software. Whereas with this employment tribunal, the NHS aren’t handing over devices or access to their software so they can say “we checked for the email but couldn’t find it” and the tribunal won’t push them further. The tribunal will make a decision on whether the emails were sent or not, and what the likely content of those emails were.

Foran says in his podcast that initial disclosure was c700 pages and is now, after 2nd disclose c1700

Mine don't, which is a bit weird (public sector Scotland, not NHS).

No, public sector to be included. This ban is excellent news for feminism and for women in the UK.

Yes, the contents basically says we need to start a group to discuss this but we need to not discuss things outwith the group to avoid foot in mouth syndrome (foot and mouth comment is in the email. I paraphrased it as fight club quote). I haven’t seen the email myself but Michael Foran has as its in the bundle.

placelurking again

I've just read your username properly 😄

Ha - I had forgotten that. Upton will be reading along and weeping buckets as his laydee friends have under oath called him a him/ he / they/ man/ male / trans identifying male and all manner of other misgendering things.

Since they’re all ‘not engaging’ correctly in his role play I wonder who he’s going to complain to. Sandie had allegations of misgendering levelled against her that would have amounted to gross misconduct. Why doesn’t he raise a grievance against them all? That will keep NHS Fife busy and keep down the statement version numbers at least.

Several possible backstage battles:
The Statement, & prep for defamation action (getting names)
controlling continuing defamation by hearsay
'Threats'
Complaints from Lynsey & other TRA's
Non disclosure
keeping JR jack in the box under control

I was seen by a Women's Health Physio this week and was very pleased to be in an all female environment. If Dr Upton would like a prolapse I'm sure he could have something arranged, but not sure what. I guess the testes start their own southward journey in some cases so he could enjoy that one day.

I haven't heard any pages numbers in the 2,000s yet.

But, well past 1000.

I’m repeating this as many folk seem to still think there is a missing deleted email at the heart of NCs questioning.

The email has been submitted as part of the 2nd round of disclosure so the question of proof is around whether it started the chain or was an email on its own. The reason why establishing it was part of the chain matters is because since none of the 6 included it in the initial iteration of disclosure it demonstrates collusion.

Ha ha ha. God yes. Who'da thunk that any real world NHS body could make the Green Wing crowd look sane by comparison.

Math fhèin! I adopted it to answer one person on another thread making extremely goady and condescending TRA comments, and then kept it in my username toolbox. I should probably drop it as it’s quite rude!

ah ok, thanks! I'm (clearly) struggling to follow all the details.