NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #42

[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 #40 can be found in this thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 41: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379334-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-41 24 July 2025 to 25 July 2025

I'm catching up over lunch and still in the last thread, but the Fifer's comment about the NHS Fife IT guy being so far from forensic you'd have to catch 3 buses to see forensic is making me cry with laughter

Attempting to be neutral, what I take from the phone file examination is that DU's contemporaneous notes are just DU's notes. They shouldn't be afforded any more weight than simply his recounting today what happened in the historic incidents.

And it’s only really occurring to me now: can the fact that John Swinney has said on public record that he has full confidence in NHS Fife (which in turn has [had?] full confidence in Beth Upton) not be considered political interference?

The transgender medic at the centre of Sandie Peggie's employment tribunal against NHS Fife altered phone notes to include patient safety concerns after the Christmas Eve changing room dispute.
Evidence bundles seen exclusively by The Herald revealed that Dr Beth Upton kept a log of her interactions with Ms Peggie months before the incident.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25341258.upton-altered-records-include-peggie-patient-concern/

It also throws a whole new light on the HR notes being altered. Are we really expected to believe these just minor grammar amendments?

I work as an expert witness (different field).

Yes, this is an outrageous allegation, and makes JR look like an eejit - of course a professional/expert witness will be paid for their time in carrying out an analysis and producing a report.

I've not done work for employment tribunals, and there are different forms of words for civil and criminal cases, but every expert report must contain a signed disclaimer that you understand your duty is to the Court and not to the party instructing you, and that you have not withheld any material information or entered into any arrangement where payment of fees is dependent on arriving at a particular view.

This is really scraping the barrel - I've not encountered this level of ad hominem attack in 25+ years of expert witness work. It's reasonable to enquire as to the nature of the instructions that were received, as that can be a source of potential cognitive bias which might unconsciously influence analysis findings, but this is a direct accusation of professional dishonesty for monetary gain, which is deeply insulting. I'm surprised the judge didn't intervene, although maybe the witness was so fast to bite back that J felt he didn't need to. She should have been told off for that, in my view.

Would it be unkind to ask how that’s going for them?

I keep reminding myself of that. Sandies backer is absolutely amazing.
So so glad Sandie found her because this isn't just Sandie this is every single female who needs to get changed at work.

yes, nobody gave him a proper log i.e download of the time and date stamps from the phone that he would obviously need to determine the digital forensics on the file. Instead they gave him a screenshot i.e photo of the list of files with their time and date stamps which had been very badly altered to show different time and date stamps, to attempt to disguise the fact that their other evidence showed that the files had been edited before they had been created, which is obviously not possible, as per JBs own experiments with the Keep app and its auto syncing with Google mechanism.

Quite a morning! So can I take it Upton's contemporaneous notes were not actually contemporaneous? And the unexplained dodgy dates of any edits mean that these notes should not be included by the Judge/Panel?

With something as simple as this, it is highly unlikely. Nothing is ever impossible, but we are dealing with a phone sending data to Google's servers and Google stamping it with the time it was received.

I'll be interested to see how the BBC reports on this turn of events. If they report on it at all.

Oh I thought sandies team had cancelled the meeting.

I agree. I’ve seen a similar question put to an expert in another case who immediately said “Yes of course I am being paid to offer my expertise to the Court. And if your client had asked me first, I would have acted as his expert, and charged him the same amount. And my evidence would have been exactly the same”.

thought that was an excellent response.

and they sort of contradict the hysterical and dramatic accounts he gave to ED and KS

There doesn't seem to be anything aggressive about the CR incident - if anything DU was more stroppy in the encounter

After he had agreed to do so, if I remember correctly.

Trump arriving in Scotland today so good day to bury bad news!

I said upthread that if DrU had presented them as 'Something distressing happened to me in the CR, and this is how I wrote it up later', that would be OK.

His problem is that he said they were contemporaneous notes, and not only do they not read as such, they read like an essay, but JB cast serious doubts on DU's claims about his notes being contemporaneous.

He's been caught embroidering the truth at best, making stuff up at worst, and all because he didn't just say' This is how I wrote it up later'.

I expect that there are plenty of places on t’internet where forensic IT help each other.

It seems odd to me that Upton wasn’t in the same room as the NHS Fife colleagues (the hospital can’t be that big and that stage NC had said that if the events had been falsified it would be very serious for Upton). Similarly Upton not disclosing the make and model of his phone to the claimant.

If I were telling the truth I’d go out of my way to prove it!

I have enjoyed Boiled’s images, but have had to scroll far too quickly to acknowledge them.

And we are dealing with the civil standard of proof ie what is more likely than not to be the reason for the inconsistencies?

Oh look, it's Friday afternoon. Soon be a time for a public statement from NHS Fife.

Will he be giving evidence?
I'm sure someone on Reddit will manage to invent something.

Does it seem that Upton may have lied on the stand and, possibly, falsified evidence?

I imagine that will be what Ms Cunningham asks the panel to find, yes

I don't think JR's attacks on witnesses are doing her side any good - that she is engaging in (increasingly hysterical) personal smears is just making her look desperate.