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

So hold on.. are you saying she should have asked him to leave then when he didn’t, just carry on? She had every right to keep telling him to leave. He did not belong in that space. What about his actions? He knew he was making her uncomfortable. He knew he had no right to be there. He was loving her discomfort. He is a nasty narcissistic areshole.

described Beth Upton, who was born male,

SAD TIMES! MISGENDERED BY THE BMJ!!!

Continuation thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379979-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-43

I can tell you how it closes. You’ll see Denton gets a contribution.

Upton told the tribunal that, on two occasions before the Christmas Eve incident, Peggie had left the changing room when Upton entered it and had stood outside. Giving evidence in February, Peggie said that she was “embarrassed” during the third incident because she was menstruating, and she insisted that she was not drawing comparisons with a convicted rapist when she compared the situation to a “biological man in a women’s prison.”
Peggie has also begun legal action against her trade union, the Royal College of Nursing, for failing to support her after her suspension. A spokesperson for the union said, “We have responded to the claim, and we deny all the allegations from Ms Peggie.”
Elouisa Crichton, a partner at the Glasgow office of the international law firm Dentons, said, “Sandie Pegg’s claim against NHS Fife is interesting because the events took place pre-FWS [the Supreme Court judgment in the case For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers], but the litigation is taking place now with the benefit of the Supreme Court judgment. As such, we are looking at those past events through a new lens, and that could be important.
“There are various rights at play here, so FWS alone will not determine the outcome. The employment tribunal will need to consider the specific facts, acts of both parties, and the rights of the other employees. But it will certainly loom large over this hearing, and in terms of timing, this case has come right at the point when the public are focused on this topic.”
The tribunal hearings are expected to finish on 28 July, with judgment to come at a later date.

Indeed. What a total DARVO.

'I was made to feel harassed by that woman telling me no' 🙄

If he didn't want the conversation, he could have left, not stay and enjoy exercising his power over her.

I'm just caught up, having skipped some convos, and have been wanting to put this in for ages.... This is definitely a time for Pikachu sad-face.

Don’t be ridiculous. She’s in a work setting, there’s a reasonable expectation of professionalism from them both which includes knowing how to raise things and knowing when to step back and take it through a different process.

If the record is in any way a reflection of what happened she could have explained her discomfort, without referencing unknown others, and agreed to take it further when he suggested she do that. He would have left more quickly and she could have attended to her needs.

Sad, sad times 😓

Let’s remember what the law says; employers have to provide single-sex changing facilities. This is mandated in workplace regulations that pre-date the Gender Recognition Act. The regulations quite clearly refer to biological sex.

Upton, with the connivance of NHS Fife, was breaking the law. Why shouldn’t he be challenged?

And she shouldn't have been put in a position where she had to tell a man about her menstrual flooding, regardless of how he identified.

Why should she have to?

Dentons, ignorant of For Women Scotland 2 then.

He said she asked about his chromosomes.

Does anyone remember from Sandies testimony whether she said that? Or was it suggested to her and she said she might have done. Don't forget, she wasn't making notes at the time.

Very sad.
The saddest.

This justification has so annoyed me. Where in that support for a junior doctor is there a need to disclose all the detail from his perspective unquestionably FFS.

they could have said Dr U has reported and incident that he says he found very upsetting. Whilst his report forms part of an investigation we should keep in mind that aspects of this may impact his shift patterns.

FFS.

Do you think NHS fife / Dr U realise they've lost control of the narrative?

Yes. That's what drove their press release a week ago. They almost say so explicitly in it.

There is a more than reasonable expectation of a single sex or single occupation changing room, per the H&S at work regulations.

Why on earth should she have to discuss menstrual flooding to achieve this?

There is no reason to believe that this would have encouraged him to leave.

Is it only a week since that. Sad times.

Because it was an organisational decision that he could use the changing room, and that wasn’t going to be resolved at midnight so getting into a discussion with him wasn’t going to change him being there and just prolonged her standing there dripping with blood.

He should never have been there.

If she told him he'd have made a note about it to relive the experience later. He may not have even left.

It's all about control.

Nice bit of victim blaming.

This is a fair line of argument only so long as the organizational decision was lawful. If in fact they got the law wrong, her actions have to be interpreted in line with the correct law. That's what they mean by "ignorance of the law is no defence".

Also, what is the process that she was supposed to use, apart from take NHS Fife to a tribunal? It's taken over a year so far, and the lawyer is still trying to argue that the SC judgement doesn't apply to changing rooms.

Given Upton's professionalism seems to have extended to the level of amending documents like a toddler armed with Microsoft Paint, I don't think he would have left. Quite aside from the fact that she shouldn't have had to explain anything to him re her bodily functions as he shouldn't have been there.