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

https://www.rcn.org.uk/magazines/Action/2025/Jul/Newly-registered-nurse-jobs-crisis-Use-us-or-lose-us

Ok i have not read through everything and thats why am confused brb lol

Presumably he faces the wall for a reason and does need to change from scrubs to jeans at some point that Fiona has never witnessed?!

Unfortunately for JR and Dr Upton, your rights in a democracy are unconditional.

Those holding political views that do not align with those in charge have just the same rights as everyone else.

The witnesses we are hearing from at the moment are Fife's witnesses. The new witnesses are for SP. I believe we will hear from them tomorrow afternoon.

Hi all does anyone know how to tune into Michael Foran live this evening? I subscribed to his substack last week. Have not been able to follow today's events at all yet.

The historical NHS career structure from 1948 until about the millennium was that UK trained doctors were trained to become consultants, largely. The junior, underprivileged and poorly paid staff actually doing two thirds of the resident doctor work permanently without promotion were foreign graduates. Now we train UK graduates in much larger numbers no one has really worked out a career structure for all of them - there aren't enough consultant jobs for them all to be trained for.

Foreign graduates don't have to be offered permanent jobs so can be offered posts outside or in the training programme but don't necessarily have to be offered a permanent job
The solution is not obvious.

It's a common and often successful mitigating tactic in constructive dismissal cases, if the employer hasn't followed proper processes but can show that the claimant was heading for dismissal anyway.

In this case I think the line of reasoning will be - well we had no reason to listen to SP's complaint or take her seriously because everyone knew she was a bigot.

This opens up a whole can of worms for NHSF though, if these incidents were known and nothing was done about them.

Not that I believe this hearsay anyway - it's the kind of thing you would say in private to a friend who you knew shared your views, you'd be mad to say it in front of work colleagues who have all sorts of varied backgrounds.

It's not a good look for SP in the sense that this is what will appear in today's headlines, but it looks very much like the message went around that SP was out of favour and some staff were keen to add anything derogatory they could think of to her reputation.

Just reposting the link from The Scotsman 's live blog. It's got good, easy to read summaries of what's being said.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/nhs-fife-employment-tribunal-live-the-latest-in-the-sandie-peggie-and-dr-beth-upton-case-5244152

I’m not worried. NC is going to do the biz with that twaddle as evidence.

It will make the headlines, though. Which ain’t great.

I’ve recently had to have surgery. I had a fantastic British trained student nurse looking after me overnight afterwards (I don’t react well to general anaesthetic). She’s graduating this year and can’t find a job. the majority of her cohort haven’t found jobs either.

Yeah thats what i was confused about cos the new witnesses seemed to be for Sandie but then i read you all speaking about someone like they were for fife and then i realised I hadn’t read any of the testimony from FW!! One thing i dont understand is this is all hear say isnt it? Why would JR call this witness if she cant recall anything properly just vague mutterings of somethings that might have been said?

Keeping his bottom half covered up, as usual. 🤨

Hmm…i can’t think why.

Sandie is in her 50s working in the modern day with patients from a wide range of ethnicities. There has been no suggestion that she treats anyone poorly because of their race. Yet everyone is talking as if shes alf garnetts in the 1960.

yeah that chimes with my experience from somewhere no far awa in the similar timescale.

Besides, even if SP thinks immigration is too high, that would just align her with about 80% of the population.

Did FW say she directly heard some of the racists comments or was it all hearsay?

What response is that ickky? Was it today?

If any of what the witnesses are saying has even a hint of truth (and I'm not saying there is, there's a lot of hearsay going on here from a Trust who are aware they look bad), why on earth did no one report it? Staff there seem to (going off the action taken about Upton's claims) hardly be shy about addressing perceived issues but were seemingly hanging back about addressing alleged racism?

Even if Sandie was the original Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, she would still be entitled to SSS. It wouldn't make her a nice person, but still nothing to do with this case.

They are making themselves look bad here.

Hearsay is permitted in civil cases. Indeed, contrary to common belief, it is allowed in criminal cases but only under limited circumstances. However, it is weak evidence and, in the context of this case, it really isn't relevant. SP's right to a single sex changing room is not dependent on her political views.

So the defence for NHSF and Upton is resorting to using smear campaign to paint Sandie in a bad light in order to justify the appalling way she has been treated. “She made me do it Gov” isn’t the defence they think it is 🤔

Why are they focusing on the racism im sorry to sound like i dont care but even if Sandie is the most racist person at fife (which i dont believe is the case) its doesnt mean she cant object to a man being in the womens changing room!!

Exactly

@langtounescapee I grew up close to the hospital and it was a very monocultural, working class area back then (70-80s). Casual racism was very much the norm during my childhood and I never questioned or realised it until I moved away to uni. Eg 2 local corner shops (on a hill) were known as the

I think that was the norm everywhere. I grew up in a large city and any shops ran by Asian people were called the same regardless of where the owners were from. No one ever said the Indian shop.
And it was rarely said in a derogatory way, even though times have changed. I mean it was normal language used by my parents/grandparents. It was more ignorant than anything else.
Even now to say 'asians' would be pretty ignorant. They usually mean Pakistan but there's a huge difference between people from Thailand vs. Pakistan.

Anyway, I'll get back on topic.

Freak, weirdo and IT ?? In front of random colleagues?

I think not.