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

I agree with a lot of this and I’ve been wondering why NHSF have gone down the mudslinging route because they’ve definitely lost the fair procedure part and discrimination. However you’ve made me wonder whether this isn’t a desperate attempt to clear DU with NHSF as one massive organisational handmaiden..?

I would love to know if SP made her legal team and her financial backers aware from the outset of the existence of the evidence of racism. SP must have known it might be dug up.

Why would anyone put themselves in that position?

If I understood it correctly, she only put forward a few messages (on Friday, I believe?) leaving out her own wrongdoings. She wasn't expecting NC to have all the messages from the chat, and JR tried to prevent them being submitted.

In one, she'd said SP is ''a fanny whose going to end up with a massive payout''. So, probably motivated by jealousy, thought she would just get to rock up to tribunal, twist the knife in, and skip off into the sunset. Instead, she's probably risked her own career too.

As an aside, I’ve signed up to Michael Foran’s substack (actually paid) so I can get a rundown of what he thinks is happening. Catching up in the IT expert day from last week and it’s worth every penny.

I also think it’s unlikely SP will be able to go back to working in A&E, this tribunal has had a lot of press attention and win or lose she’d have every TRA nutter in a 100 mile radius turning up in A&E with a splinter accusing her of spitting in their bandage or looking at them the wrong way.

@NHSFifeStatementFinalFINALFinalVersionV9FINAL Missing the point. How many people really feel genuine grief about a tragedy that does not involve someone they know? Performative grief on social media - yes. A degree of concern - certainly but compassion fatigue gets virtually all of us eventually.

If you work in a&e you see a lot of really nasty stuff and if you dont learn to disassociate to some extent you are useless to patients. Bursting into tears at every death makes you useless to the next patient and you have to learn to set it aside or burn out. After many years in a&e I wouldnt expect Sandie and colleagues to respond in the same way I might. Dark humour is part of keeping the emotional response down.

Out of the choice of those two i know which i would emply (although I would want an explanation and ideally to be shown the chat to get a better idea).

I can’t think of any witness in this tribunal that I’d employ - the independent IT expert excepted. Every one of them in their own way has shown themselves to be deluded, vindictive or thoroughly unpleasant and unprofessional. Nor would I ever be seeking health care in Fife. No one is coming out of this in a good light.

Dark humour is part of keeping the emotional response down

Too right. I’ve worked in a highly charged, difficult environment, working with some of the worst information you’ll ever read about what people are capable of. Black humour and sharing that with colleagues keeps that contained in the workplace so you don’t take it home.

The difference with the content shared in the chat we’ve seen today is that it wasn’t in response to a work issue. It overstepped that. Although I would still have to place it in the context of a group who do share dark humour to cope and as such whose boundaries might look different to other peoples.

Can someone please tell me what the posted racist jokes were as i would very much like to judge them for myself rather than hearsay.

I have skipped a lot of pages to say this BTW

Michael Foran is on live now on his Substack.

As with all legal cases, women have to be the perfect victim, otherwise it’s all their fault.

The BBC response is nothing short of disgusting. So glad I no longer pay for that Mens Rights organisation.

So what if SP is racist, so are lots of people, and given the NHS is the biggest UK employer, the law of averages suggests a large portion of BHS staff are racist.

The thing about the jokes for me is it doesn’t look like one person in the chat including LN reacted negatively in any way at all.

Not even a small shocked emoji or a ‘Sandie!!!’

Or a ‘nope - that’s not okay, come on!’

Or a private message to say something gently if you wanted to keep your friendship going.

Or remove yourself from the group and stop going on vacation with these people.

Are we allowed on here?

I presume that this is the smoking gun evidence of Sandie's bigotry. Not actual racial discriminatory behaviour towards others , nothing adversely affecting patient care or working with racially diverse staff. Only sharing something she thought was funny within a group with similar sense of humour, and not many instances of this. I am mixed race and I have a clear view of what is racist behaviour. Name calling in the street. Treating less favourably than white colleagues, asking intrusive and ignorant questions,excluding me from opportunities, different expectancies of me. This is some way off sharing unfunny jokes with friends. Its not great of Sandie to do this but it's not any excuse for the hounding she has been exposed to.

https://www.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?reply=146014382&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

Given black women are 4 times more likely to die in childbirth, have generally poorer health outcomes and black staff are much less likely to progress in their career, I’d say it matters if healthcare staff are racist. It may not have relevance to the matter at hand, but it does matter.

I was working on the assumption of needing one or the other!

Apologies for the many, many typos. My phone and I are not friends right now and I'm not catching them all.

I don’t think the jokes should be shared.

I think it promulgates (?) the attitudes within it. Even if shared in approbation

Thanks @GargoylesofBeelzebub

I was just unsure of the professional consequences that she could face for naming someone. It seems to have slipped under the radar somewhat because of all the racism/homophobic accusations.

Was she really so stupid that she thought only a small section of Sandie’s messages could be up for public consumption?
As I said on the last thread, Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

Also, without sounding all Fife mean girls, bet she doesn’t have a very relaxing holiday now.

I think just the opposite. This case is about ignoring facts and assuming. Ignore DU is male. Assume he's telling the truth. Assume everyone is acting honestly.

We need to see the facts and make our own judgement instead of being told other's opinions and treating them as gospel.

If you examined everyone’s private life, bad taste jokes, bitching about others, viewing habits, affairs, domestic abuse, drinking issues, light shoplifting, driving offences, train fare dodging, I don’t think the NHS would be staffed at all.
The general idea is to behave professionally at work, and I think that’s what sandie Peggie has done. I don’t think she has to be a perfect person, but a competent and ethically fair nurse.

Embarrassed that twice now I’ve used the opposite word than I’ve intended and this time I spotted it too late to edit.

Disapprobation obviously

I'm just scrolling through my phone messages to see what horrors I've written.

It doesn't look good for my cat!

The messages are absolutely racist. Saying ‘Britain has plenty of spare p**is if they want some back’ is fking racist. That word is racist even if your mum uses it and you think she’s fking great. There are poorer outcomes for people of color in medical setting because of people like her. Absolutely disgusting that so many of you minimize this because she’s your current heroine. White feminism indeed.

Thankyou, mostly pretty bad, some were very de humanising of the Pakistani population.

However i have heard this “hang mans” sense of humour play out where people are struggling with what they are faced with in real life situations.

Not acceptable of course.

what i find surprising is that the two witnesses decide to become grasses, when they went along with it. Foot quite some time.

Has really no relevance to her claim.