NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #45

[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. (Considerable understatement.)

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 27 July 2025
Thread 44: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5380196-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-44 25 July 2025 to 28 July 2025

Doesn't JR have support from the NHS Fife legal team? She's hardly flying solo.

RL has gotten in the way today so trying to catch up. Who is Gina? She seems to have been mentioned a few times today.

.... and celery soup

Its all remarkable and I do wonder what the rest of the staff at NHS Fife who have fuck all to do with the case, make of the shit show.

And in a similar vein... if NC wants to now show that other people objected to DU in F CR too, how relevant even is that to SP's case? Surely if it holds for many it holds for one (or vice versa!)

im confused; SP was struck off for protesting against DU being in the women’s changing rooms.

what do these messages have to do with nhs fife’s claim that was justified?

Ah OK thanks, that makes more sense in context.

Not sure she'll want to rely on them given the general standard of professionalism in NHSF

I can tell that LN is a bit dim. She was so blinded by crusading against SP, that she forgot about how she herself was coming across to the tribunal.

NC, the opposing solicitor, essentially asked her if she has a reason to be biased, and LN said yes. LN double downed on having an axe to grind against SP and destroyed her own credibility in the process. I don’t think anyone with a balanced view of the proceedings, would look at LN’s evidence and think she’s an impartial colleague who simply witnessed SP being unprofessional. Instead she egged on SP’s behaviour and never reported her concerns, just randomly gave evidence on the penultimate day of the tribunal.

Part of the group chat who seems to have been rather tipsy at one point.

As someone noted re a pic of Pete at work you don't use a plunger to unblock a loo. For roughly same reason as I understand.

One thing I've been thinking about.

Lindsay said it was her duty to let the public know exactly what she's like.

Why didn't she apply that to letting Fife also know when she was being internally investigated

She said she didn't report Sandie because she knew there was an internal investigation taking place. Surely this would have been the ideal time to report her.

I'd also like to know exactly when she decided to give the chat to Fife and provide a statement.. Was it after they had had cleared her? Just before the tribunal restarted last week?

If they'd had all this evidence of Sandie being racist back then, surely this would have altered the outcome of her investigation, and led to an NMC referral?

I'm confused.

Of course, but we are not privy to that

I don’t think it directly matters. However earlier on in the tribunal, a few witnesses for NHS Fife said SP was racist and homophobic and the claimant denied this. So I think the NHS are bringing in these witnesses to prove a point essentially, that their previous witnesses were being honest and SP was being dishonest. I think anyway

'i knew she was being investigated so I didn't think it was necessary to report her racist behaviour: makes absolutely no sense.

How else does she think Fife would find out if noone reported it.

Just bloody bought Mort today. Thread's costing me a fortune.

NHS Fife is like the Portoloo Emptying Guy who successfully managed to turn the switch in the wrong direction at a festival and ended up spraying a whole load of bystanders in the process.

I'm also assuming that this Lindsay has only just come forward with all this chat stuff.

That it was the surprise bundle that appeared last Friday.

Tomorrow is an earlier start with more witnesses and a later finish - so they can be done by Friday and not need to come back in December? Is that right?

What's happening with the ham sandwich and Irn Bru lady? Are they dispensing with her evidence (or did she just get missed by TT)?

Haha, I bet they wished they never bothered 😂

It looks like JR has given up the actual case and is going for "wee Sandie wasn't very nice"

You often see this tactic used against women

Courts sit from 10-4 with an hour for lunch. The hour before and the hour afterwards are so the legal teams can prepare for the next day of the case, or to prepare for their next case.

just because the court isn’t hearing evidence or arguments at 9am, doesn’t mean the parties involved nor working.

Additionally, stenographers need proper breaks throughout.

I would imagine that if there were multiple complaints it a) shows people have been lying and b) the harassment was targeted at Sandie.

Well a laugh is an involuntary thing and sometimes you laugh because "that's so awful, I can't believe he said it." Jimmy Carr has built a career out of that. I love Rodney Dangerfield and he was doing the same for decades before.

There's probably a whole generation that's grown up only knowing Frankie Boyle as a sanctimonious wokescold who says "OMG the Daily Mail" on panel shows, and has no idea what his routine used to be like.