NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #41

[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: 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
Thread 38: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5378463-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-38
Thread 39: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5378747-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-39
Thread 40: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5378996-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-40

Ha! I'd forgotten about Esther Postbox Davidson.

I was thinking about how back in Feb, JR was telling NC that if she dragged this tribunal out (even though it was JR/ Fife causing delays) it wouldn't work well for SP...

How's that working out for you, Jane?!

Also anyone of us might wind up in hospital.

Very true. In one case you might appoint a barrister in, say, a probate matter, who believes in mad gender stuff and in the other you might have requested a female medic and Dr Upton appears daring you to say that he's not female.

Indeed he would have had a name tag saying "Dr. Beth Upton" possibly. But that's it.

Dr. Upton was also at a very early stage in transition so unlikely to be taking any hormones.

A postbox?! 📮

I'm not sure that AH and even AG would know anything about what senior clinical staff (nurse managers and doctors) were up to. Surely HR are 'admin', and therefore lowly (even if in a senior position). Same goes for knowing the Boards' motivation.

Also, SP wasn't allowed to discuss the investigation, and then the disciplinary case, and she was suspended for a lot of the time, so how was she supposed to sound out colleagues to find any witnesses to support her? The disciplinary didn't finish until after this case started. NC wasn't able to call anyone. If she'd seen the full disclosure before her turn was over, she might well have called those sceptical HR officers (I think their emails were late disclosure, weren't they?)

And we will all have had contact with nurses. That female biology makes it pretty much inevitable at some point in our lives.

Manager denies health board sought to 'punish' trans row nurse - BBC News

The argument was that she had passively received some statements but she was not an investigator because there wasn’t an investigation . . .

Just following up on this- it's very rare for junior doctors to wear anything other than blue scrubs in a Scottish hospital

Looking forward to catching up with today's events. Have also done some gardening for a worthy cause.

I agree though I also think there's an aspect that the general public are now more aware of what's going on than they were then and there's more interest. There has clearly been a massive uptick in people being aware and reading along with this thread (from comments I've seen) which is partly because it's a nurse involved for the reasons you and a pp have said but also because the whole GI has now hit such a level of bizarreness than people are saying 'hang on, what's going on?'

A mass peaking basically.

Yes the possibility of a male nurse wanting to carry out a smear test, claiming to be female, and with the veiled threat that you might be kicked off the practice list if you query it or refuse - that's scary

Thanks, I missed that.

True, but I do think more people can identify with a hospital situation than academia or publishing, so that may be increasing the interest as it's more personally relevant.

I may be losing the plot, but I wish there was a short animation of DU in his scrubs coming in to the changing room and freaking out Sandie (who lets remember hasn't even been told transwomen are allowed to use the room...)

There was a cartoon somewhere of hlm crying and asking why she won't undress in front of him.

This one?

It is scary - not sure how I'd react in that scenario. I've had a male doctor do a smear, but always with a female nurse in the room, and I knew in advance it would be a male doctor.

If I'd asked for a female and got a trans-identifying male, I wouldn't be happy at all, but I'm not sure how I would address it.

Yes, potentially everyone could end up in a situation where they say 'can a female nurse do my smear' or 'can a male doctor examine my prostate' and before they know what's happened they've been cast out for being trans phobic.

Another gripping day - and a proper full day as well with the prompt start and the relatively late finish. I feel like the NC : JR pronouns kerfuffle is so crucial to the case that it’s uncanny. But the difference is that it’s all playing out in public (my thanks to @Justabaker and TT) and Big Sond (J) is a much fairer and more professional arbiter than NHSF.

In other news, I made the Easygayoven Olive oil and zucchini bread. Messed up the amounts (read tbsp instead of tsp for the bicarb and baking soda!) so it exploded out of the tin but it was still blooming delicious. And the baby wrens liked it too.

There's also this image, which seems pertinent to today

I'm terrible without visual info - I need a who's who with photos and a summary, like Genspect did with the people at WPATH.

The day before Part 2 started, NHS Fife cleared SP of misconduct due to lack of evidence.

Otherwise I've got a bit lost on the timeline but it sounds like NHSF have completed balls'd the whole thing up.

DU & KS discuss the patient safety allegations end Dec 2023 and these are documented but at the time of SP's suspension the reason given is the Datix which only mentions the incident in the CR.

ED who is SP's manager and also a witness starts an IX (which wasn't an IX). ED is new in post so is supported by the bloke (Jamie?) who wasn't called to give evidence but is said to be responsible for the decision and they cook up a Schrodinger's Risk Assessment that may or may not exist, that noone has seen but all are totally confident that this risk assessment is the reason SP was suspended. First in January and again in February SP is suspended despite someone in HR saying this is "ludicrous" and everyone agreeing that suspension should be avoided and they can't remember anyone being suspended in A&E before or any problems with SP over 30 years other than one junior getting a bit upset once. (Unblemished record compared to other staffers?!)

But by February SP's solicitor MG has written. Lottie Myles is brought in and speaks to SP and DU plus other witnesses but this is not considered to be an IX (wtf why not?). LM is aware of the possible ET and she needs to get SP back to work so lifts the suspension and is trying to get SP back to work in early March 2024. Unfortunately they have been slow and can't work out rota details so they have to suspend SP again in early March. She finally gets back to work in April? SP is being supervised by a senior colleague for "support" and LM frames this in case of any other allegations. Initially this looked really bad, but on reflection, given that all the senior staff are sharing tittle tattle and speaking to witnesses to influence them, I'm inclined to agree it was better for SP to have this protection from the managers even though it must have felt an awful of her nursing.

Meanwhile AG begins her top secret and super speedy [dripping sarcasm emoji] investigation by picking up a file in early March before going on leave for 1 week. She agrees to having KS as DU's interview observer, so therefore has to interview KS before hearing from DU. Usually it would be DU then SP then others. Is it April when she hears from DU? And she writes to SP in May but there is some mix up and SP doesn't get a letter outlining all 5 allegations until August (?) which came as a shock. There are criticisms at this stage that it takes SP a month to come in for a formal IX interview but given that it is holiday time and NHSF has so far taken 7 months to get to this point that seems a bit rich. And there are lots of irregularities with the paperwork with DU's statements being issued in multiple versions and in private meetings with no witnesses or records to correct "grammatical errors" - no sure why a meeting is needed for that. And AG does admit she's never had this before.

A lot of that has never happened before seemed to happen on this IX didn't it?
Like a PP said above - shitberg of this highest order.

I also think women know for themselves how uncomfortable it would be to be forced to use a changing room with a male present and so it’s much more relatable because it’s so much closer to home.

Raspberry scrubs please.