NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #44

[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 had been intended to be 28 July with 2 days of submissions from counsel meaning that the hearing was to have ended on 30 July. However, it became apparent as the hearing progressed that this schedule wouldn't be followed.

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: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 41: 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
Thread 42: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379820-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-42 25 July 2025 to 25 July 2025
Thread 43: 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 25 July 2025 to 26 July 2025

Witnesses in the hearing so far with skeleton chronology:

Monday, 3 February 2025
Sandie Peggie

Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Sandie Peggie

Wedneday, 5 February 2025
Sandie Peggie
Maya Forstater
Darren Peggie (Sandie Peggie's husband)
Nicole Peggie (Sandie Peggie's daughter)

Thursday, 6 February 2025
a row about disclosure particularly over BMA documents
Sheila Bell (Sandie Peggie's mum)
Beth Upton

Friday, 7 February 2025
very late start, massive row over disclosure, agreed that Beth Upton would start giving evidence on Monday

Monday 10 February 2025
Beth Upton

Tuesday 11 February 2025
Beth Upton
collapse of public access

Wednesday 12 February 2025
Beth Upton

Thursday 13 February 2025
Esther Davidson

Friday 14 February 2025
Esther Davidson

a break of many months

Wednesday 16 July 2025
Isla Bumba

Thursday 17 July 2025
Gillian Malone

Friday 18 July 2025
Elspeth Pitt
Louise Curran
the omnishambles ending provided by the statement from NHS Fife

Monday 21 July 2025
a late start seemingly with the panel and lawyers in discussions about something
Lottie Myles

Tuesday 22 July 2025
another late start seemingly with the panel and lawyers in discussions about something
Kate Searle

Wednesday 23 July 2025
another late start seemingly with the panel and lawyers in discussions about something
Lauren Harris
Kate Searle

Thursday 24 July 2025
Angela Glancy
during AG's testimony there was a row over NC's entitlement to use correct-sex pronouns
Ann Hamilton

Friday 25 July 2025
Peter Donaldson
Jim Borwick
Maggie Currer

This is a list of Abbreviations used by Tribunal Tweets and has been taken from their substack

Claimant, respondents, counsel, members of the court

C/SP - Claimant, Sandy Peggie
NC - Naomi Cunningham, C’s barrister
MG - Margaret Gribbons, C’s solicitor
R/Board - first respondent, Fife Health Board
R2/DU - second respondent, Dr B Upton
Rs – first and second respondents
JR - Jane Russell, KC, barrister for respondents
AW - Adam Watson, solicitor for respondents
J - Employment Judge Alexander Kemp
ET - Employment Tribunal
P1, P2 - additional panel members; CM Russell, L Brown

Witnesses/Frequently Referenced Personnel of NHS Fife

MF - Maya Forstater, CEO of Sex Matters
DP - Darren Peggie, Claimant's husband
NP - Nicole Peggie, Claimant's daughter
SB - Sheila Bell, Claimant's mother
ED - Esther Davidson, SP’s line manager
IB – Isla Bumba, NHS Fife Equality and Diversity Lead Officer
KS - Kate Searle, A&E consultant
SF - Stuart Fraser, SP’s RCN Rep
AG - Angela Glancy, headed up in SP investigation
VV – Vic Valentine, Equality Network

Abbreviations for frequently used terms (not exhaustive)

AE - Accident & emergency department
B&H - bullying and harassment
CR - changing room
CX – complaint
DX - disciplinary procedure or process
FtP - fitness to practice
GC /SR: gender critical or sex realists. Belief that biological sex is important, immutable and different from gender identity
GI – Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with their birth sex.
HI - hate incident
HR - Human Rights
IX - investigation
PCP - provision, criteria or practice is a rule, policy, or practice that can put people at a disadvantage based on certain characteristics. The term is used in employment law to assess whether an employer's actions create different outcomes for employees based on their characteristics.
SocMed - social media
SM - Sex Matters
TM – transman (person born female who claims a male gender identity)
TMAM - transmen are men
TW – Transwoman (person born male who claims a female gender identity)
TWAW - transwomen are women
OfS - Once for Scotland
EA - Equality Act 2010
PC - protected characteristic; 9 under EA
RA - risk assessment

Would it be possible for people to turn their attention to this post by@FayeRCfrom a previous thread:

I have a similar court case in England's side which aims to protect single-sex facilities for women. It is in need of support to cover legal fees and can be found by searching for Faye Russell-Caldicott on crowdjustice.com

"I have issued an employment tribunal complaint against NHS England for indirect discrimination on the basis of sex (women), religion (Islam), philosophical belief (gender critical) and disability (PTSD) for having a policy in place which effectively renders the supposed single-sex toilet, changing room and showering facilities as mixed-sex."

There's more information here: https://sex-matters.org/case-briefings/faye-russell-caldicott-v-nhs-england/

And Faye’s MN thread is here
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5159395-employment-tribunal-case-to-protect-single-sex-facilities-at-work?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I’ve been following TT on X but must confess don’t always understand what’s going on (except it’s a shit show from NHS Fife). I’m also learning new terminology such as “in chief” I have googled and can see it means the main part of a case but from when I was reading TT I assumed it was documents not provided. But I think I must have misunderstood?

From Nauticant : I'm going to have to create continuation thread #44 now.
Now, there'll be a lovely brand new thread for people to pile in to but I'd ask you to resist posting on it until this one is full. Ending up with 2 threads running in parallel for over nearly 800 posts would not make for a great experience for people reading along later. Thanks.

Please do not post here until #43 is full.

Thread #43 isn't full, so you've not seen me, right? But I'll briefly answer @milislovelybut because it may be useful info to have at the top of the thread for other newbies.

The written evidence submitted beforehand by both sides is 'the bundle'. In this case it runs to over 1700 pages.

Each side calls witnesses. The initial verbal examination of a witness by the barrister/advocate who called them is 'evidence in chief'.

This is followed by 'crossexamination' by the opposing barrister/advocate.

After this the first side can breifly re-examine any points raised in cross (but not bring up anything new).

And finally the judge/panel can ask the witness questions if they need to clarify anything.

Hopefully this link works. It's to the Scottish Healthcare Awards (or some such). There is a category for nurses.....
https://www.nationalworldevents.com/sha-2025/

Interesting poster on Reddit. Analyse of Searls testimony and details on Borthwick that you all might like.

www.reddit.com/user/A_Mans_A_Man_/

I think we should all nominate Sandie for nurse of the year.

x.com/thescotsman/status/1949364160547930317?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

Following on from @KnottyAuty‘s post in the last thread, I think there’s a mixture of incompetence and cover up. Fife staff rushed to be on TRSOH and (IMO) incompetently allowed Upton access to women’s changing rooms and mid-managed the subsequent investigations. It would seem to me that there was a retrospective attempt to make themselves look like they hadn’t done anything wrong.

I hadn’t realised, however, that Upton was added as Respondent at NC’s request/insistence - what were the grounds/reasoning for this?

How fitting though, that Fife and Upton seem to have been force teamed, in the way that the TQ have force-teamed themselves with the LGB

On other fronts, I agreed about Colour Of Magic not being the best DW book, despite it being the first. I had several goes at getting into it before I did. The Witches and City Watch series are much better, much as I do like The Librarian (Ook!) and the warring academics. STP had clearly spent some time at a university…

I also love Nancy Mitford’s books, I can practically recite Love in a Cold Climate off the top of my head!

And only clotted cream has any right to be anywhere near a scone. At a stretch I might accept mascarpone but it would be a close run thing.

<wrestles gavel from previous holder and smacks down firmly>

Two among many very shrewdly observed on topic posts on the last thread, just in case anyone missed them among all the jam and cream and crumbs:

From @MyAmpleSheep at 10:33
While we are wrapping up this thread and anticipating moving to the next one, may I point out this interesting sentence from DU's phone notes as quoted in the Times article?
"Elspeth tells me she is sorry and that I am not a difficult person. Not [sic] am I being difficult."
Smoking gun... he asked if he's being difficult because he know's he is being difficult. That's why he had to ask "am I the difficult one?". It's the "Am I the baddie" moment.

and

from @Merrymouse at 10:37
, , , boring old body sex has an asymmetrical impact.
If you are male your role in reproduction is so limited that you may never know if you have any offspring. Your sex has much more impact on intangible concepts like status and sexual attraction, so you may conclude that gender is more important than sex.

I'm interested in the ins and outs of Upton being a respondent, too. Anyone know? I think I'd assumed he'd simply been named at the beginning. He (unnamed then eta I mean anonymised) was already a respondent in the news article shared at the beginning of Thread 1. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nhs-fife-fights-secret-hearings-33877891

Rings @pollyglot Door bell repeatedly.

I'm sure she's in I thought I saw a curtain twitch.

Yes, I thought @MerryMouse 's post was very insightful. I've not heard that point before.

I'm proud of us all for not posting on this thread until the old one was full <claps>

These threads are incredibly informative and helpful but also a very very bad influence. Having been 'forced' to add Tunnocks Tea Cakes to last weeks shopping I have now been 'forced' to add scones and clotted cream. Sigh!

Oh I missed all the home made jam talk 😔

@merrymouse
And boring old body sex has an asymmetrical impact. If you are male your role in reproduction is so limited that you may never know if you have any offspring. Your sex has much more impact on intangible concepts like status and sexual attraction, so you may conclude that gender is more important than sex.

You’ve nailed it with this! Thank you - it’s a piece of the puzzle I was missing.

Also a point I hear KJK mention once on a podcast about how we women don’t understand male sexuality (and don’t want to necessarily plumb those depths either). Hence why many women take the BeKind at face value not quite understanding the darker parts of what might be involved for some trans sub groups (but not usually the autistic cohort).

Thinking about the inexplicable absence of Jamie Doyle who seems to be a key player in all this, I started to do a bit of digging as to whether you can be compelled to attend an employment tribunal in Scotland as a witness. I've seen that witness summons can be ordered under schedule 1, rule 32 of the Employment Tribunal (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2013 but won't always be granted.

Does anyone know if this could have been applied in this case, whether NC could have requested this or whether that isn't how it all works? I'm intrigued by the whole thing.

Also - please help me find the share tokens for Foran’s substack? I can’t see anything in the first 2 “intro” emails…

I can find an affiliate link but not freebies. Did I miss out because I was already a subscriber to a different substack channel?

one of your bags is missing!!
(third from the left at the airport)

edited typo

I have two to share. If you PM me your email I'll send the invite. Well worth it - absolutely fascinating analysis and explanation.

Its striking to me how nearly all NHS fife witnesses are female. I know that % wise women make up a lots of NHS employees but, it still feels uneven. There are men whose evidence could be useful, Doyle and his keeness to get the police involved and also i think the head of HR is male, he could provided evidence on policy and process. However they are invisible, maybe these men are keen to keep out of this as far as possible, while their female colleagues to beclown themselves in court.

Please, do you still have a spare share token available?

I would really like one as I am totally skint!