NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #46

[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
Thread 45: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5381518-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-45 28 July 2025 to 28 July 2025

Probably to discredit the witness who a) 🤣 at the joke; and b) was discovered to have breached patient confidentiality during an examination of the WhatsApp messages.

I think NC discredited her well.

Where I last worked, frontline NHS, racism was rife. Often via micro-aggressions, clustering around one area to avoid the ‘other’; sometimes overt, like mimicking, then laughing.

Muslims versus African Christians, v Hindus. With some Filipino bashing. All > 5 year arrivals.

Did we report it? Absolutely not. We know who the managers would side with. It was made very clear that recording our observations of racism among our non western-trained staff was Not Welcome.

So, racism is bad. But it’s upsetting and disappointing that it’s okay within some NHS trusts as long as it’s between the black and brown people.

As I've read it, it was the witness who joked about drag acts not Sandie.
Yes Sandie said racist comments.
However, legally the Supreme Court have confirmed that SS facilities are based on biological sex and do not have an option to ignore if women aren't perfect.
If they'd identified today that Sandie was a mass-murderer, it still doesn't change the law about SS facilities.
Fife spent a day on mudslinging rather than address the issue at hand. What a waste of time.

I was the same. When it came to the point that I could no longer handle working with these types of people I left. But when I did work I put my personal views aside..

I will bet money on that my personal feelings towards these people were much stronger than any that Sandie could hold towards Pakistanis etc, (thank heavens no one could read my mind) but as professionals most of us do our job.

Some people aren't às professional but it has been established that Sandie has an unblemished record of 30 years, her personal views were kept out of the physical workplace , and never influenced the care she provided.

Fife spent a day on mudslinging rather than address the issue at hand. What a waste of time.

But aimed more at the court of public opinion, maybe.

I will try and go back through TT transcript tomorrow. I just wonder were they commenting on a patient with a fetish or a patient with medical continence issues?

.

Definite fetish reference

I think it was a post with about 12 jokes on it that had been forwarded to Sandie that she forwarded on

If the jokes had been about some other disaster then racism wouldn't have come into it. They'd just be a bunch of sick jokes.

As part of theory that the jokes start flying 4hrs after disaster strikes. I think when they start talking about 1000s and 1000s of people being harmed people cannot comprehend the scale of it and It becomes face-less, just numbers, that nobody can comprehend.

Disasters with a few hundred killed even the 9/11 attacks names and photos are published. People can put themselves in the picture, that could be their husband, wife, etc.

Why? Was Peggie not as pure as you needed her to be? Why do you require that of her? Why not understand that it doesn’t matter if she scatters dead kittens on her cocopops, she is still entitled to a female single sex space?

What horrendously disappoints me is that mumsnetters require the victim to be the very Virgin Mary, the Mother Teresa of victims in order to be worthy of our support. Not just ‘a woman who doesn’t want a bloke in a dress in her changing room’.

Can I ask whether you think young girls in short skirts who get raped are ‘asking for it’, too? There are parallels in that thinking

On balance, I prefer to judge people on their deeds, not their words. I would rather be treated professionally by someone whose private words are cruel than be treated unprofessionally by someone who says all the 'right' things and expresses themselves in the approved manner.
Of course, the ideal is someone who is pure in both thought and deed, but I'm not sensing that there are many of those in NHS Fife...or indeed in life in general

The witness who raised the flag on this did her own additions to the chat including was criticising a witness who complained and shared her full name and medical condition. She admitted she breached NMC rules.

The part that I don't understand here is that I thought things said in court were privileged. So can the fact that the witness breached NMC rules be used to take action against her?

I get the impression that the whole of the NHS is quite racist, which perhaps explains why such EDI policies as they had don't address them.

No, it’s not disingenuous to suggest I was annoyed at the quite a lot of ‘Oh no, this is bad!’. I think you may have misunderstood me (you quoted me without attributing, which is fine, but easier to quote me in full). I’m not endorsing what Peggie did or didn’t say, but, like you, I feel this should have no bearing on the outcome.

What horrendously disappoints me is that mumsnetters require the victim to be the very Virgin Mary, the Mother Teresa of victims in order to be worthy of our support.

Exactly what I posted about earlier. This bizarre view that not being racist is some impossible standard that no-one can actually achieve.

And ignoring that fact that nearly all posters expressing disappointment have explicitly said they still support her case

I'm playing catch up with this, as I was on holiday last week, and not able to keep on top of it all from the beach.

I'm a few threads behind, currently reading the car-crash evidence from the Fife tech 'expert' 😱. Just skipped here to say a huge thank-you to @nauticant for her epic thread marshalling. You have done us all an enormous service! Absolute legend.

I gather some evidence came out today that Sandie made some racist jokes? Hugely disappointing, of course.

But where in the law does it state that women forfeit their rights to single sex spaces if they say anything racist? I don't recall there being any such carve-out.

@Fordian Where I last worked, frontline NHS, racism was rife. Often via micro-aggressions, clustering around one area to avoid the ‘other’; sometimes overt, like mimicking, then laughing.
Muslims versus African Christians, v Hindus. With some Filipino bashing. All > 5 year arrivals.
Did we report it? Absolutely not. We know who the managers would side with. It was made very clear that recording our observations of racism among our non western-trained staff was Not Welcome.
So, racism is bad. But it’s upsetting and disappointing that it’s okay within some NHS trusts as long as it’s between the black and brown people.

Did we work in the same place??
I could written this word for word. And added Ghanaians Vs Nigerians. North African Vs Black African.
But we don't talk about that

On that note, I really am off to bed.

Sleep well 😴

I'd love to return the discussion to the forensic tech chat, actually! My friend has some ideas about how there may be different colours on the screenshots, although it's all kind of academic without seeing them.

Of course, the ideal is someone who is pure in both thought and deed, but I'm not sensing that there are many of those in NHS Fife...or indeed in life in general

Not being racist is a pretty low bar to achieve though, hardly a state of purity.

But where in the law does it state that women forfeit their rights to single sex spaces if they say anything racist? I don't recall there being any such carve-out.

Nowhere, and I don’t see anyone here saying that. But if NSHF want to try and show a pattern of bigotry, as opposed to SP objecting to a man in the changing rooms then racism becomes more relevant.

This. I’m in my 50s and it’s been at least 40 years since the P word was ever deemed “acceptable” (not that it ever was) in modern parlance

This is a bit of a sidebar, but I'd like to address the point about dark humour

I lost friends in a terror attack.

Unfortunately, in an age of social media you have probably less than an hour before it becomes a meme. Please keep in mind, if it amuses you and your dark humour, if you recirculate it in a place like X or Facebook, it may well be the case that next of kin has not yet been informed. if they don't know exactly where their loved one was at the time, that might be the first they hear about it.

We have seen totally revolting behaviour on here on MN in the context of things like true crime. It's not a coping mechanism. Sometimes it's just people have such sad and pathetic lives, they have to make a big deal out of something and treat it like a TV drama. Or they're just deeply deeply unpleasant people. Or both.

And so-called dark humour creates a lack of humanity around the subject matter.

I experienced the lack of humanity in real life when a male colleague in his 50s asked me for details about the situation. (I had some time off work after it happened). I mentioned his age because he wasn't like a 19-year-old or something.

I could see that to him, it was just like a TV show. He had two kids. So I said "okay..you want an explanation?? It's a bit like this. Imagine after Lucy (daughter's name) has been in a car explosion, you didn't even know she was in a car...You get a phone call from someone telling you that they have found part of an ankle and they have bagged it up and they're waiting for someone to run a DNA test"..

My tactic worked I think. Once I put his daughter's name into it, he looked really upset and realised that I was an actual human being to whom this had happened. He held his hands out, said "oh my God stop". And then he put his head in his hands. And then he raised his head and apologised profusely.

I would not want to police what anybody says or jokes about. But I absolutely do not believe that this is a way of coping with stuff if it hasn't affected you. There is a massive difference between making a joke about something that affects you and the long list of rancid "jokes" that we have seen today.

just wanted to get that off my chest.

I'm afraid I think whatever happens in this case now, it will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

The majority response is that of condemning SP’s racism. I haven’t noted any posts suggesting being ‘not racist’ is an impossible standard.

Most posters are saying that females are entitled to single sex spaces. Their right to single sex spaces should not be contingent of whether are racist, not racist, or anti racist.

I am disgusted by SP’s racism and saddened that the story is adding fuel to the lazy narrative that people with GC views are right wing, homophobic, and lovers of trad gender roles.

Prior today, it was clear that NHSF was rotten. Today show how the rot extends across all levels of the organisation - which isn’t surprising as that’s how organisational culture works.

The reality is it never as simple as there being hoodies and baddies. Every person involved - the claimant, the respondents and all the witnesses - will have positive and negative characteristics. I think this tribunal has been really ugly. It comes across as having been ‘playing the man and not the ball’.

I disagree. The bar can be set very high for 'not being racist'. It depends who is in charge of the bar at the time.

And if they successfully persuade the panel that Sandie is a bigot, does that absolve them of their need to provide single sex spaces? And does it mean that Sandie was not able to complain about the fact a bloke was changing in front of her and expecting her to change in front of him?

Pretty disgusting of them, if so. Though pretty congruent with the holy show they've made of themselves so far.

As @Brainworm says, very much a 'playing the man, not the ball' approach.

We used to be able to correctly identify a man in a women's changing room as either a flasher or a peeping tom, before all the numpties fell for this genderwoo bollocks. That's what's at stake here, the right of all women to once again have the protection of single sex spaces.

I am appalled at any racism. I am also appalled at your rape analogy which is out of order. I am obviously still on the SP side of this case.