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

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Unprofessional and immature, frankly. I hope this isn't normal behaviour for KCs!

It's like it's a tip from 'How to win tribunals and influence people' or 'The new politician's guide to winning arguments' or some such. It's not as clever as she thinks it is.

Every day something new. Is this ever going to end?.there was mention of possible part 3 in December but not sure where they're up to with that.

She’s been childish in this way in every tribunal I’ve seen her in. I guess she is hoping the hostility will trip people up, but I also think there is personal animus and playing to the TRA gallery involved.

I have defended myself to another poster. As I said it was a quick comment on Mums Net not an acdemic paper. With respect we do not know who each other is in real life. I would never and have never been dismissive of women from other minorities.

I cannot stand the Social Justice warriors. They live in vacuum of self importance. The Pulp song Common People springs to my mind. They have caused significant damage to those who genuinely believe in equality and equity of opportunity it is my principles that despite my qualifications (I am a EDI dream with my lived experiences) I have and never will apply for a job like Isla Bumba, even with the salary that is offered.

I am well aware the middle class women are the worst for judging other women. Those who have never experienced the type of poverty that drives you back to your abuser just to have real access to food and heating.

Have you ever tried the tinned stuff? I bought some from the Campbell's factory but gave them all away. Swerved the tinned whole chicken.

The thing is JR dropped 2 new witnesses right at the end of the tribunal so the claimant clearly has the right to respond.

Seems JR thought the 2 nurses she dropped in would be heard today and the hearing would end.
But things haven't quite worked out that way.

when NC said there'd been developments overnight, the theme for never ending story started playing in my head.

Is the point that it makes it very difficult for anyone to contact her and offer support/to be a witness too? Big brother is watching and all that.

Fair enough - I just assumed that everyone's post would be opened in the post room and directed as appropriate so that this would be nothing new.

I was given the unpleasant mental image of Frankie Boyle doing yoga poses the other day.
Thanks a bunch to the poster for that

BJ definitely deserved the C U Next Tuesday version.

As always, thank you to nauticant for setting up the next thread for us.

I hope Bez is back later because I'm going to have to sign off at short notice at some point. Also it'll be more entertaining cos he's so much funnier than I am😄

I go do some work for a few hours and now have loads to catch up on. See you all on the next thread by the time I've done that. 😂

Yeah, true. This will do as a SFW / young eyes option though!

Every workplace I’ve been in all
post would be opened by our admin team, logged/scanned and then passed to me. The only exception would be mail marked private and confidential and then I’d be expected to log it/scan it. Work isn’t the place for personal correspondence.

I think NHS hospital is rather different to eg a financial institution of wherever you have worked.
There is a mixture of mail. Personal addressed to patients. Thank you letters to individual staff (sometimes, but probably quite rarely in NHS Fife), other post to staff, sometimes medical records from another trust or abroad, possibly correspondence from suppliers for instance. Who is going to do the vetting? The post room staff are probably on the lowest paygrade and I wouldn't think the people who should be tasked with this sort of responsibility.

And as an aside I would think there would be a much higher risk of correspondence being mislaid either inadvertently or on purpose for some reason.

Heaven knows, in my own hospital supplies delivered and logged by the supplies dept still manage to go awol between supplies and their destination Our internal intranet chat regularly has appeals from staff trying to trace a particular delivery. I still don't know if the new mortuary saw turned up. Yes, there was an appeal to look for the very expensive new mortuary saw that had been delivered but never made it to the mortuary. It was big - about the size of a kitchen unit. I personally believe it was stolen for resale, along with probably quite a lot of other stuff that goes missing but who knows? 🤷‍♀️

They could be on dodgy ground by allowing/not allowing certain letters through or even losing them altogether. What criteria did they use to decide?

The fact they were doing it for Upton doesn't help. The problem is that, if this is true, one of the respondents (Fife) took it upon itself to read all mail addressed to the claimant (SP) without her knowledge or consent. That is totally unacceptable behaviour.

There was also some evidence included that Fife's apparent position that SP is the only member of staff with a problem is untrue - that there are other members of staff who are unhappy but they are too frightened to speak out.

Whilst we are waiting for the overnight dev to be discussed - I learnt (learned?) a new C U Next Tuesday thing recently. FOCUS. F off cos you are stupid. Haha.

I hope Sandie's OK.

Wow, what have I missed now? Apart from a drive by scolding for failing to object in the right terms when explaining another poster’s question.

So number of trans people in the UK.
Number of them male
Number of them black
Number of them doctors
Number of them that are black trans-identifying male doctors in Scotland is going to be tiny.

You can google the percentages if you want, but don’t trust the ONS % of trans people as the question was flawed.

Can we say whether race is irrelevant? We don’t know, but probably not, and besides that is not the question being examined.

Should NHS Fife have allowed a man in the female changing rooms?

No. Never, even before the SC ruling.

My message to SP was on a postcard, so quite open. But it was addressed to SP c/o Victoria Hospital, so clear it was personal not a work communication.

haggis and cheese is good in toasted sandwiches too