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

No, but good catch. Mr B gestured to the claimant's counsel when saying he would be invoicing through them, so it passed by uneventfully.

Solicitors, usually

I haven't read tribunal tweets or the whole thread today so I don't know exactly what Dr Upton is alleged to have done, but being proved to have deliberately falsified evidence would be extremely serious for a doctor. Serious dishonesty, even outside of work, can lead to a doctor being struck off.

@BettyBooper snap!

I was doing a summer project at that time and was able to watch that trial word-for-word.

From what I saw I wasn't at all surprised that the jury reached the verdict it did. This isn't to say I think she was innocent, but I also don't believe the prosecution proved her guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The FLA legal system, rules for admission of evidence, etc. is, however, very different from ours and quite a chunk of what was presented wouldn't even have been admissible in a UK court. I'm fascinated by the intricate, finer details that might appear boring to some!

The evidence of the notes shows that in a way, some of the 'calculations' made by NHS Fife were right (even though I don't think many people were thinking logically).
Take a parallel universe. DU arrives, checks he can use f CR, told yes. So far, not unusual for that time in Scotland. SP objects - let's say not to him, but to her line manager.
Line manager says yes, good point, let me look into this. By some miracle (given the backdrop in Scotland at the time) HR suggest that DU changes somewhere else.
DU has been taking notes since he first clocked women didn't like him in the changing room. He tells them they are being discriminatory, makes a grievance, etc etc. Maybe even takes it to a Tribunal. This was the risk that Fife were calculating was the biggest risk. He could have gone to the media. There may well have been lots of people to back him. AND - if he had gone to a Tribunal, Fife would have been in a pretty similar position to today - no proper policies, etc. And 'women' as a class, wouldn't have been able to defend the case and say we want single sex changing. Fife would have needed to do that. And may not have done it well.
We (not Sandie, but women in general) are very lucky it actually happened differently.

Someone was suspended for 6 months by the GMC after being caught using their wife's travelcard. One might consider that falsifying evidence / lying under oath is significantly more dishonest than that.

Indeed! I hadn't gathered the massive significance of this. It should absolutely nail on that he made up the patient safety issue after the changing room incident.

Can someone explain the exclamation mark thing to me please? I've only managed to dip in and out of the thread.

I remember back in the first trial bit, Dr U seemed more happy than I would be handing over his phone. But it says today there was a delay due to a cancelled meeting.

Going back and editing bits if it’s punctuation isn’t that bad is it?

Oh yes probably. Getting juicy goss into the media to mitigate reputational damage to NHSF and DU probably isn't JR's actual goal (though it did feel a bit that way with all the homophobia and racism angles). But it certainly would have been headline news if JKR got named at any point, more interesting than time stamps.

(Points at JR). Ridikulous!

Where is that stated? This seems to give pretty far ranging powers

"33. The Tribunal may order any person in Great Britain to disclose documents or information to a party (by providing copies or otherwise) or to allow a party to inspect such material as might be ordered by the county court or, in Scotland, by a sheriff."

If he's found guilty of perjury or criminal contempt in a criminal trial then the GMC would take action. They won't do anything in response to the outcome of this tribunal, no matter what the Judge says.

Interesting that there were no ques from the judge or panel to JB - seems his evidence was totally clear to them.

Wouldn't that be because the transport company would regard that as theft, so criminal, not just dishonest?

No. The Michalak tribunal named doctors who lied, committed fraud and bullied. They had no detriments to career.

I had a case where we sued a medical professional (keeping the specifics vague) & got a finding of fundamental dishonesty against him (that’s applicable in England, not Scotland), and once we got payment out of him, reported him to his professional body. I’m waiting for confirmation he’s been struck off.

Whatever the outcome is, depending on the final judgement, I’d expect any adverse outcomes for anyone involved in this matter - who are registered with professional bodies - may well find themselves facing the prospect of losing their professional licenses.

Back on

JR made much of the fact that the expert JB had put ! or even !! in his report, which she suggested was a damning thing for an allegedly neutral expert witness to do.

I think it was amazing she didn't find some WTFs in his report!

Typical public sector. Emails containing terrible news - usually about restructure and redundancies - always arrive at 5pm on a Friday.

SMT are sadists, I'm sure of it.

Judge on about timing issue. Going to stop at 3.45

Discussing how to resolve as witness not available monday

The Forensic computer expert, JB, made a couple of statements in his report that said something like 'I am at a loss to explain this!' (I'm paraphrasing as cannot remember the exact wording) and JR has basically said that the use of exclamation marks show bias against Upton.

What difference does it make who's paying SP's legal bills? Apart from making it possible for her to bring the case, once she has brought the case, why does it matter? The evidence will be brought and it'll either convince the court or it won't.

Going for a break