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

Public opinion is irrelevant to the outcome of this case, the panel have to decide it based on the law, anything else is just noise.

True. But look at the FWS Supreme Court ruling.
Anything to muddy the water for these people. It's all they have.

I think its kinda disgusting tbh!

It's a credibility issue.

She is now undermined in everything she says and so her self report can not be trusted. That's important to establish.

If we’ve learned anything through this Tribunal is that every day we learn something new that shifts our perspective. I expect that the new witnesses will do the same. The question is - in what way today?

At the moment there’s concrete evidence that NHSF unlawfully allowed a male to access the female CR, that they believed DU over SP because of her colleagues’ disapproval of her expressing strong/problematic views (mainly outside of work?) rather than a concrete display of bigotry, they botched her disciplinary process, complete failure to meet the court order to disclose on at least 3 (!) occasions; they appear to have colluded to assist DU with evidence tampering and now seem to be resorting to character assassination as a final desperate move against apparently inevitable loss of the case - using a witness who has been seen speaking to another witness while under oath and for whom theres concrete evidence of regulatory failure. I’m reminded of Jo Moylon’s love of pig wrestling- getting down in the dirt to prove salience for the good cause. Urgh. It feels dirty watching all this.

And at the moment it’s very difficult to want to be seen to support SP when she’s allegedly expressed racist views (I don’t believe what’s been shared so far shows that she’s homophobic or transphobic). But we’ve only heard the one side of the story and soon we will hear from SP.

I don’t seek to defend problematic views but we are all here in the zone of defending an individual’s right to their beliefs as long as they don’t manifest those beliefs as discrimination. Newsflash! That’s where GC views currently are. If SP isn’t “allowed” her problematic views (as long as they don’t impact her work) then we aren’t allowed our GC views either. So we must be careful to avoid a rush to judgement in the way we are ourselves judged by others.

It’s also worth remembering that NHS Staff face a barrage of abuse from the public. To expect them to absorb all of that with saint-like virtue and grace seems unreasonable. To decide that all the NHSF nurses are potentially sackable because they were in this bawdy WhatsAppseems to me to be potentially holding them to higher standards than the average person. We might not like it but the rise of right wing parties across Europe and the US makes me wonder if I’m in a minoriy left liberal…

I’ll reserve judgment until we’ve heard all the evidence - even if that’s jolly difficult to do!

Having re-read the tribunal tweets last night I thought it was quite telling that the Judge and Panel had no questions for the witnesses. Maybe they don't see any relevant evidence from the witnesses yesterday?

I could be wrong and sorry if someone else has already brought this up, I can't keep up with these threads!

My mistake, sorry, someone said I think that it was early in the pandemic and I was thinking of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Karachi_floods . Press seems clear that it was the 2022 monsoon flood referred to though.

It assume this was a shitpost Wee Sondie received and then forwarded to the group chat. I'm massively judging her for that, on the Internet.

Really disappointing, and I hope she's fully ashamed and had a good think about that. She will have and have had a lot of Pakistani colleagues (and also folk from neighbouring countries who also get that word cast at them). Many of whom probably got on well with her, imagine how they feel.

Fifer : fuck's sake Sondie, you an yer pals are getting us aw cried racists noo, ah'm black affrontit and beelin mad!

I don't know whether it will make people feel better or worse, but having read results of quite a few NMC fitness to practice enquiries, I think it's fanciful that LN would be struck off for sharing a patient name in a group chat with other nurses. I tend to only see the results, though, I don't have access to the reasoning.

Bez, if you're going to be doing your regular copying in of chunks from TT, along with witty commentary, I'll desist from doing any copying and pasting myself, in the spirit of my earlier post pointing out that there are nearly 500 posts already and the trib hasn't even started yet!

I think the grudge is money and and the attention SP is getting. She was quoted as saying something like Sandie is a fanny who doesn't deserve a big payout.

Stuff like this changes the dynamics of existing relationships. See also inheritances, lottery wins, winning Britain's Got Talent, so on and so forth.

Bloody Hell Wims! I head off for a long weekend and everything goes to pot. I've valiantly tried to keep up on my phone but crikey what a rollercoaster. Thank you from the heart of my bottom for all the commentary and analysis and witty quips. I'm up to date, logged in and ready to go.

@MarieDeGournay I'm not able to post until about lunchtime so crack on please.

I'm away to the dentist so will catch up later. Must remember to check her whatsapp before I let her do my root canal.

ok Bez! We'll miss your comments thought, I'm not that funny😐

I'm glad I took Boiled's suggestion and had a night away from this thread, watching inane tv last night. Yesterday was very disappointing. But irrelevant to single sex services and spaces.

Am I right in thinking today is two witnesses for Sandie and a whistle-blower from NHS Fife who contacted Sex Matters?

I see the timekeeping has already gone to pot. Hurry up.

SP isn't necessarily undermined in everything she says after yesterday. She's going to be cross examined again and (hopefully) will 'own' the jokes she made and accept responsibility and apologise for any offence.
That's what I'd do if I'd been found making less than favourable comments online.
Of course she could also go down the NHS Fife route and make excuses, use weasel words and lie which imo will undermine her word as much as Fife have undermined theirs.

ANd NC's cross examination of MC from Friday.

Maggie Currer cross from Friday. Two new witnesses to rebut the stuff from yesterday and suggest others protested about lack of single sex space.

Few issues - one wants to do remote. Judge hasn’t ruled. And seems like one witness can’t/ won’t turn up so the sex matters person was coming to give hearsay as to what they told her. Anyway let’s see how it goes

Judge has arrived

J - will allow the cvp witness, but must be quick.

Someone giving evidence pm via CVP

Having slept on it, my thoughts on yesterday.

1. As I have said several times, SP's right to a single sex changing rooms is not dependent on her political views. Even if she is a white supremacist, she is still entitled to a single sex changing room and she should not have been hounded for trying to assert that right.
2. This is straight out of the TRA playbook. I am not surprised to see many TRAs on social media seizing on yesterday's evidence and saying "I told you so" or similar. They continue to push the idea that anyone objecting to a man in a single sex space for women must be racist. They clearly want to use yesterday's evidence to try and peel away some of the public support for SP.
3. I don't think this helped Fife at all. It is tangential to the case.
4. JR needed this evidence. Without it, she would have repeatedly branded SP as racist and encouraged witnesses to do the same with no supporting evidence beyond some third of fourth hand gossip. That could have led to her being referred to the Bar Standards Board. This evidence is probably enough to avoid that.
5. We have not heard from SP regarding any of the evidence introduced yesterday. Fife has rightly been criticised for rushing to judgement on the changing room incident without troubling to find out SP's version of events. She has the right to answer these accusations too. I note that JR was keen to stop SP having any opportunity to respond to this evidence.
6. TRAs and some media outlets seem to have focussed on the bacon allegation. The evidence for that is pretty weak. FW, who introduced it, can't say when it happened but it was clearly years ago and it seems SP says that the alleged comment was made by someone else. No-one else who was there has given evidence. The rest of FW's allegations have even less detail. I'm not sure I would regard her as a reliable witness, especially given that she and LN ignored the judge's instructions and spoke to each other during the lunch break. She says it was just about what to eat for lunch. Bluntly, I don't believe her.
7. If the list of jokes that has been posted on here is correct, some of them are pretty bad. However, it appears this is the one time SP has shared racist jokes or said anything racist in a conversation that has gone on for 7 years and thousands of messages. That doesn't forgive these, but it provides context. In my view, it is not as bad as aiming racist slurs at members of minorities or, worse, subjecting them to substandard care. I'm not saying these jokes are acceptable.
8. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" is a maxim LN should have heeded. Her evidence appears to be motivated by spite. She clearly thought that Fife would have her back and that no-one would see anything other than the few messages she introduced. She may well have ended her own career. Sharing confidential patient details in a group chat like this is clear misconduct. And I suspect some of her colleagues will want to distance themselves from her if they've been following what happened yesterday. She may come to bitterly regret turning on SP.

It's Miss Moore from Sex Matters on the CVP