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

Yes I gather that legal people are quite able to put Work Face on and tear into one another in court, then switch it off and be amiable colleagues when not on the client poond. I guess I'd find that difficult, personally, but probably you'd not be very successful in adversarial law if you couldn't do it well.

I just can't imagine JR & NC being friends. Their views are too opposite

NC and big Sonds maybe

I’ve just had a thought - rare for me. As part of our internal investigations we not only have to look at the issues raised but any wider organisational issues that may need addressing, such as HR policies/processes etc and make recommendations.

any NHS peeps know if it’s the same as there are obviously standard template to follow

I add semolina to my meatballs.

@BezMills Sandie used Beth herself in the first tribunal, although usually Dr Upton.

i prefer "Beth" plus "he/him" it makes it very very clear what is going on.

Two reasons for my awful behaviour.

“Beth” is not a suitable name for a man in Scotland.

I am not always very polite or kind to people I despise.

Yes, I thought that was to Wee Sondie's credit

If he was a woman - they wouldn’t be there!

😫
It gives me brain ache.

@ChimpanzeeThatMonkeyNews

”I add semolina to my meatballs”

I just sang that in my head to “We’re getting married in the morning!” so I guess that’s my earworm for the day.

@TwoLoonsAndASprout The Environment Agency are respondents defending the decision to have a SEEN network. JR should be defending the decision.

A very interesting question indeed.

It's part of the TRA damage control book.
When sandie wins a big payout (I'm expecting aggravated damages to be awarded) due to the haldane ruling which was in place at the time of this case, with the SC ruling going even further now than haldane by saying that even if a man has a GRC he is still a man under the equality act, businesses up and down the country are going to start paying proper attention to this.
The TRAs are fighting a loosing rear guard action, the SC ruling was a fatal blow to their claims of being inclusive, kind and progressive. They are currently running around like headless chickens trying to grasp at any straw they can with the claims that the ruling doesn't affect anything but public boards to the women's pond and the WIs claims that they are allowed to make up their own definition of what a woman is (all equally legal nonsense). As each of their claims about the SC ruling are shown to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors the TRAs/charities/activist groups will lose any remaining credibility and be shown to be the financial liability that they are. When that happens they lose the last of their power and relevance.
Now that said it will take a fair few transwomen taking employers to crt over the refusal to let them use the female facilities and losing (as they will) to embolden them to say get all this crap out of the workplace and hold firmly against all mantrums and threats thrown at them but its coming.

They are indeed obiter. The SC did not specifically rule on changing rooms. They were covered as part of the reasoning for their decision and they expressed the view that provisions in legislation for changing rooms, etc., require a biological interpretation of sex, supporting their view that sex in the EA means biological sex and that, for EA purposes, men remain men and women remain women regardless of any GRC. That is not quite the same as deciding that women's changing rooms are only for biological women. However, given the SC judgement, it would be very surprising if any court were to decide differently and, if they did, I would expect the appeal to be easy.

That seems at odds to the screenshot I posted. Am now confused. Who is NC defending then?

I've been thinking about this 'leaving the facilities because a transperson is in there is a microaggression' problem.

• One must not commit a microaggression.
• It is 'impossible to tell' if someone is trans.
• It is a microaggression - or probably a full-on macroaggression - to ask if someone is trans.
• Therefore the only way to avoid offence is to assume everyone is trans, and for nobody to leave a lavatory or changing room that contains another person.

Malicious compliance via ideological sardines is the only possible answer.

I honestly thought Beth was only for my mum's generation (and probably even then only when there were already enough Lizzies in the family that they needed a different diminutive).

And then I encountered a youngster going by Beth in recent years, in her 20s. So maybe it's had a wee renaissance, or maybe it's taken from a favourite relative of Dr Upton.

It's definitely unusual for a man, no disagreement there!

But isn't the relevant law from the 90s stating that workplace regulations mean that any workplace that requires changing clothes, like a hospital, must provide single sex facilities? And the SC clarified that "woman" means a female person, so they can't claim that the earlier workplace legislation meant "women and any man who says he's a woman"?

@TwoLoonsAndASprout Andreas Mueller* *Googling Public servant sued for saying sex is binary will provide more details.

Excellent. I'm glad you're on it Bez!

And once you're done with that let's get started on introducing the millennial generation to the term shilly-shallying.

Alongside palaver and malarkey.

Yes, I don't know anything about JR's private views - don't move in those circles - and she is not her husband's keeper. The most consistent thing I know about her record is that she represents employers. And from all accounts does a pretty good job of it when she's not got absolute muppets for clients.

This is why we don't find our old friend David Renton appearing in these cases. He's a longstanding TRA and has done lots of ET work down the years. But, as a good socialist, he represents claimants and not employers.

It's really a function of the "GC" side in all these cases being the claimant side. Which tells you something about the power relations involved.

Yes. Appeasement doesn’t, and did not work.

Exactly. If it's not possible to tell someone is trans, then how can you know if you're committing microaggressions and discrimination against trans people by leaving the area?

I think NC has built this picture up under NHSF and allies by specifically asking who DU told they were trans, of course DU said only KS.

So if DU didn't tell SP they were trans, then how would SP know DU was in fact a man. Well the obvious answer is with her eyes, but NHSF whenever they've been questioned about this, they say it's a matter of opinion and skirt around the issue.

Do you like chick peas, cos this is excellent.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/warm-spiced-cauliflower-and-chickpea-salad-with-pomegranate-seeds

There are two IT experts. The first is an IT Security Manager. The only IT Security Manager of that name I have found is not employed by Fife, but it may be that Fife outsource some of their IT services to his employer. The other is an expert in mobile phone forensics, so is presumably the person who examined Upton's phone.

As far as we know, both have been called by Fife. We aren't going to hear a great deal from either of them as each of them will be questioned by JR for 30 minutes then NC for 30 minutes.

I don't know for sure, but the most likely reason for calling the IT Security Manager is to talk about how Fife have handled their disclosure obligations and possibly to try and justify their repeated failures in this regard.

The brief time each side wants to question them suggests we aren't expecting any major bombshells from either.