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

Back on

I think the WhatsApp messages only go back 7 years, with the problematic ‘jokes’ being more recent. It is not clear if SP had anything to do with the bacon thing. It is possibly someone else yonks ago.

Well, I can tell you of a CT/MRI dept 8 miles from me that would have about 2 of their staff of 20 left if they barred everyone with racist views. The staff are 100% non-western trained, Africans, Indians, Sri Lankan, Filipino. They pretty much all gang up on each other, whisper in corners, all gravitate to one scanner leaving someone alone on another.

But it was made clear to us that THIS racism was ‘nothing to see here’.

I guess you didn’t know this, did you?

So will Dr Upton's messages to friends be used against him as well? Maybe his web history? That would be very interesting and just as relevant.

Agree.

or straight onto calming herbal remedies!

I had to stop reading half of MN because of it. Wanting to wear a mask around a dying relative in a hospital full of dying people got you called a Dementor and lots of piss-taking about Living Your Life In Fear.
People can be disgusting.

I suppose for the TRAs, who demand absolute purity and compliance and will drop and demonise a person for any perceived sin, the idea that a woman who engaged in abhorrent racist jokes does not as a consequence lose her right to single sex provision and dignity is incomprehensible. In their world rights are only for people they like.

Had SP and every member of that group been disciplined for sharing racist jokes I would support that 100%, and I would still believe every member has a right to single sex spaces and the rights being female give us.

I agree with you. I have been told my work emails are very formal. Too formal at times. You would not know if I was emailing a colleague who is also a close friend. It is work and I very rarely make personal comments. I have always been conscious that they could be used in a tribunal. I keep my personal opinions to myself in a work email or Teams chat, professional opinions only.

She is lying

No! Surely she just made an error!

Stop with the character assassination it's not been well known for 13 years that she is a nasty person. In 7 years of WhatsApp chat that is what they found. If we all looked back at everything we have written over the last 7 years we would likely find something we are ashamed to have written

She probably can't recall

I took out the £1 subscription to the Herald and have been following their live blog as it rounds things up more succinctly than following TT. The live blog seems to have stopped? It went up to about 20 minutes ago then when I refreshed it was gone. I've deleted, logged out, logged back in but there's no new blog and none of the previous. Anyone else got this?

Now onto the dsd stuff...I learnt it in medical school...
Which she got wrong in her evidence anyway.

Let's face it, SP sounds bloody awful. A nasty, racist person amongst a wider group of nasty, racist people. Safe to say, we would not get on.

My take on this is that for some reason Sandie's face didn't fit. I don't think it can be the racism, because they all seem a bunch of racists.

All the evidence so far points to her being a very capable nurse, so they can't get her on a charge of incompetence.

What else do they have - well here comes Upton swearing that he's a lady. Sandie objects and Bingo - now we have something to get her on, because we are all KIND and pretend that TWaW (even though we know damn well they are not.)

Then whoops, Sandie upsets the apple cart by going to a Tribunal. Oh dear, we are in deep shit. Can't do much about that, so let's spread the shit around and cover Sandie in it.

who amongst us hasn’t told a string of racist jokes

I think my new motto will be how would NC feel if she was reading this.

I think the chat messages were the only evidence other than hearsay.

"No idea why I wrote this" Oh OK cool no worries then!

@FannyCann yes the herald blog has disappeared for me too. Maybe it'll reappear later...

Is anyone else having trouble accessing the Herald live feed? I’m getting the page but there doesn’t appear to be anything there other than a link to the comments (which are not the liveblog, I checked!).

Sad times.

ETA cross post, apologies

I don't disagree with this. But it's not relevant to the fact that she still did what she did.

It's working for me. Are you sure you are logged in? If not, you'll only get a few free refreshes.

Dance like no-one’s watching; text like it might be read out in court 👍