NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #47

[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/womensrights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 41: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/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/womensrights/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/womensrights/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/womensrights/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/womensrights/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
Thread 46: mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5381640-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-46 28 July 2025 to 29 July 2025

I think @Largesso asked for this bit...

LN says you often say things like this. eg pi
SP It's how I was brought up and sometimes say pi
JR And Chinese people as ch*
SP Chinatown. We have a lot of people, chinese restaurants, we got on well...

[post edited by MNHQ]

Will they tell us what happened about the other potential witness, do you think?

Yes, in my mother’s time it was ‘no blacks, no Irish’ at boarding houses.

God imagine having to stand up in a tribunal and talk about your fucking heavy periods and how much stuff you bled through to justify using a particular changing room to sort yourself out. By someone who also accuses you of being dehumanising towards someone else. Kafka would have had a field day with that one.

The floods were 3 years ago, I doubt she's changed much since.

She's beyond awful. Hopefully gets a minimal payout.

Has SP not been briefed by her solicitor? Thinking it was a mistake to call her back…

Their argument is that she was seeking out DU to harass him which does seem unlikely mid shift. And particularly given she was willing to leave on previous occasions.

On balance I think it unlikely she would have remained in f cr on her own with DU there without there being a reason like flooding.

I said this in the previous thread but I'll repeat.

I think rapists and paedophiles are universally despised if not hated.

Do you think this impacts on the care they receive from health care professionals?

If no, why would a dislike of certain races affect the care they receive from Sandie?
(If it was the case that she actually didn't people of certain backgrounds)

Judge back

As far as I can tell SP did not apologise or show any remorse for sharing those horrific 'jokes' about the floods in Pakistan and just referred to them as 'distasteful?

She is well acquainted with Maya Forstater having been both on the winning side and later the losing side of her case. She knows perfectly well how to pronounce it.

TT's 1st of the afternoon tweets

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1950164778887836112.html

Yes agree. She had already avoided going in previously.

As a Chinese person with immigrant parents who owned a Chinese takeaway. Yes, a getting chinky for your tea is a Scottish term amongst the working class families who I lived amongst. Not a big deal for me and I don’t need other folk speaking on my behalf. I call myself takeaway kid, BBC and a Banana because it reflects my lived experience. I am Sandie’s age.

And it is entirely IRRELEVANT to whether women should have single sex spaces for themselves. Ignore the sideshow, it cheapens everyone. And I, for one, am tired of performative hand-wringing. I want women-only spaces and happy to include SP in them as she is a woman and that is all that concerns me in this matter. The rest is noise and a desperate attempt to conflate two issues. In a legal sense, they remain two distinct concerns and SSS is what this tribunal is meant to be deciding on.

Nomas I am sorry that you have been upset by the clearly racist content of the jokes, but are you actually saying you support illegal immigration? I’m all in favour of legal migration - we need their skills- and asylum seekers fleeing from intolerable circumstances- but illegal immigration? Surely not.

It's fairly clear from the questions reported how JR is tying this in to the issues in the case. There may be a wider argument that SP has a clear tendency to be a bigot and not to think through who she offends and hurts, and therefore that her objections were more to do with that than any genuine concerns.

There could also be an alternative argument directed at assessment of damages, i.e. that SP could have been dismissed for this and therefore her losses are minimal.

No further Qs from NC.

That concludes claimants case

I understand the anger.

Why are you comparing Pakistanis to rapists and paedophiles?

when I first moved to London in mid-90's I thought I (as an immigrant) was banned from the local pub which had a sign up saying "No Travellers".
#Clueless

I don't think her remedy should be based on her likeability at all.

100% is, of course, not the standard here.

Personally I think at least as realistic as what you're implying is a woman of peri age experiencing menstrual flooding and feeling concerned about her privacy at work on this basis, especially with a bloke in the changing rooms.

Wasn't Dr U late going to the changing room after his shift as he'd been busy going around wishing people a Merry Christmas. Or have I remembered that incorrectly?

Why? There hasn't been any suggestion (other than Dr Upton saying she left resus when he entered - a claim that was rejected by others) that her quality of care HAS been adversely affected by her views.

I come into contact through work with convicted criminals - not people guilty of THOUGHT crimes but ACTUAL crimes. I try to, and believe that I do, treat everyone with politeness and respect. And I'm hardly alone in doing so.

It's possible she made it up of course, however her family have all testified that she told them about it straight away as she was upset, which was before Dr. Upton had made a formal complaint.

If this was deliberate then it is strange she didn't make her own contemporaneous notes about the changing room discussion.