NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #48

[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 was 29 July 2025. It will resume again on 1 to 2 September for closing submissions.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February 2025. Sandie Peggie returned to give evidence on 29 July 2025.

Access to view the second part of 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
Thread 46: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/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
Thread 47: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5382102-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-47 29 July 2025 to 29 July 2025

Witnesses in the hearing so far with skeleton chronology:

Monday, 3 February 2025
Sandie Peggie

Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Sandie Peggie

Wedneday, 5 February 2025
Sandie Peggie
Maya Forstater
Darren Peggie (Sandie Peggie's husband)
Nicole Peggie (Sandie Peggie's daughter)

Thursday, 6 February 2025
a row about disclosure particularly over BMA documents
Sheila Bell (Sandie Peggie's mum)
Beth Upton

Friday, 7 February 2025
very late start, massive row over disclosure, agreed that Beth Upton would start giving evidence on Monday

Monday 10 February 2025
Beth Upton

Tuesday 11 February 2025
Beth Upton
collapse of public access

Wednesday 12 February 2025
Beth Upton

Thursday 13 February 2025
Esther Davidson

Friday 14 February 2025
Esther Davidson

a break of many months

Wednesday 16 July 2025
Isla Bumba

Thursday 17 July 2025
Gillian Malone

Friday 18 July 2025
Elspeth Pitt
Louise Curran
the omnishambles ending provided by the statement from NHS Fife

Monday 21 July 2025
a late start seemingly with the panel and lawyers in discussions about something
Lottie Myles

Tuesday 22 July 2025
another late start seemingly with the panel and lawyers in discussions about something
Kate Searle

Wednesday 23 July 2025
another late start seemingly with the panel and lawyers in discussions about something
Lauren Harris
Kate Searle

Thursday 24 July 2025
Angela Glancy
during AG's testimony there was a row over NC's entitlement to use correct-sex pronouns
Ann Hamilton (scheduled but might change)

Friday 25 July 2025
Peter Donaldson
Jim Borwick
Maggie Currer

Monday 28 July 2025
a chaotic start with Claimant requesting new witnesses and provision of new documents
Fiona Wishart
Lindsey Nicoll

Tuesday 29 July 2025
Maggie Currer
Emma Moore
Sandie Peggie

This is a list of Abbreviations used by Tribunal Tweets and has been taken from their substack

Claimant, respondents, counsel, members of the court

C/SP - Claimant, Sandy Peggie
NC - Naomi Cunningham, C’s barrister
MG - Margaret Gribbons, C’s solicitor
R/Board - first respondent, Fife Health Board
R2/DU - second respondent, Dr B Upton
Rs – first and second respondents
JR - Jane Russell, KC, barrister for respondents
AW - Adam Watson, solicitor for respondents
J - Employment Judge Alexander Kemp
ET - Employment Tribunal
P1, P2 - additional panel members; CM Russell, L Brown

Witnesses/Frequently Referenced Personnel of NHS Fife

MF - Maya Forstater, CEO of Sex Matters
DP - Darren Peggie, Claimant's husband
NP - Nicole Peggie, Claimant's daughter
SB - Sheila Bell, Claimant's mother
ED - Esther Davidson, SP’s line manager
IB – Isla Bumba, NHS Fife Equality and Diversity Lead Officer
KS - Kate Searle, A&E consultant
SF - Stuart Fraser, SP’s RCN Rep
AG - Angela Glancy, headed up in SP investigation
VV – Vic Valentine, Equality Network
AH - Ann Hamilton, Human resources advisor
MSF - Michele Sinclair-Farrow, HR advisor
GM - Gillian Malone, Director of Nursing, NHS Fife
MJ - Melanie Jorgensen - HR advisor
JH - Jackie Herkes - HR advisor
MC - Dr Maggie Currer, Deputy clinical lead
RA/HCW - health care worker who witnessed "missing patient" incident.
PD - Peter Donaldson, Information Security Manager, IT expert
JB - Jim Borwick, IT forensics expert

Abbreviations for frequently used terms (not exhaustive)

AE - Accident & emergency department
B&H - bullying and harassment
CR - changing room
CX – complaint
DX - disciplinary procedure or process
FtP - fitness to practice
GC /SR: gender critical or sex realists. Belief that biological sex is important, immutable and different from gender identity
GI – Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with their birth sex.
HI - hate incident
HR - Human Rights
IX - investigation
PCP - provision, criteria or practice is a rule, policy, or practice that can put people at a disadvantage based on certain characteristics. The term is used in employment law to assess whether an employer's actions create different outcomes for employees based on their characteristics.
SocMed - social media
SM - Sex Matters
TM – transman (person born female who claims a male gender identity)
TMAM - transmen are men
TW – Transwoman (person born male who claims a female gender identity)
TWAW - transwomen are women
CS - Caroline Somerville, UNISON officer
OfS - Once for Scotland
EA - Equality Act 2010
PC - protected characteristic; 9 under EA
RA - risk assessment

I've just found out that in many previous threads there's a problem with the links to historic threads. It seems that sometimes when I copied those links either the underscore from womens_rights was deleted during copying or it was replaced with <u>. That means, looking back, there'll be a number of broken links.

However, the definitive list of threads in this thread seems to be OK.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

SP may well win but I find it inconceivable she won't be struck off by the NMC after these comments. Talk about a pyrrhic victory...

Thanks once again @nauticant.

Regarding the character assassination, I wonder if similar tactics will be deployed against the Darlington nurses? The TRAs have made much of the fact they are funded by the Christian Legal Centre. It fits their narrative of shadowy rightwing funders. Or will this be more difficult because so many more nurses complained?

And does anyone know when the case is due to be heard? I thought it was October, but I'm sure it's been delayed due to the NHS Trust dragging their feet on various issues.

I imagine that the NMC and the GMC are going to be very busy looking at a few people as a result of this shitshow.

On BBC News now www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgjdnk08vpo

Would it be possible for people to turn their attention to this post by@FayeRCfrom a previous thread:

I have a similar court case in England's side which aims to protect single-sex facilities for women. It is in need of support to cover legal fees and can be found by searching for Faye Russell-Caldicott on crowdjustice.com

"I have issued an employment tribunal complaint against NHS England for indirect discrimination on the basis of sex (women), religion (Islam), philosophical belief (gender critical) and disability (PTSD) for having a policy in place which effectively renders the supposed single-sex toilet, changing room and showering facilities as mixed-sex."

There's more information here: https://sex-matters.org/case-briefings/faye-russell-caldicott-v-nhs-england/

From the article:

She was also asked about looking up policies related to menstrual health in the workplace

What an unusual thing for a woman in her early fifties to do. Smoking gun!

What for, though? Certainly what she’s said in the private group chat is repugnant, but it’s just that, private. There’s no allegation that it changed how she treated patients from different backgrounds, which would obviously be cause for an NMC referral.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t see what she’s
done that what she’s done that’s illegal or damaging to patients. You can’t police people’s thoughts.

I haven't been able to follow today but I'm confused - I thought there were meant to be x2 new witnesses supportive to Sandie. A supportive member of the group chat and someone else who is concerned about the atmosphere at NHS Fife? I can't see any references to the first one and the second one now seems to be a Sex Matters employee who took the call - did the witnesses both bow out in the end?

Grateful if someone could catch me up!

It's really not. In my early 50s my periods became very unpredictable, length of menstrual cycle could be 14 - 42 days and could be very light to horrendous flooding. Go menopause. If I was concerned about being able to access a private space to deal with this while working in a very busy department, I would probably check out the policies too.

I had to go into the office today and could only dip in and out so I have a whole thread and then some to catch up on. I'm currently on the cross examination of MC, and rather than going around the houses with DSDs and whatnot (which was in itself illuminating), would it not have been better to turn it on to their actual job role?

We are talking about an A&E department here. People presenting are the most likely of all medical departments to not be in a position of informing staff of their sex (or their gender, which for some seems to be even more important), and we have previously established that biological sex is important and does matter when it comes to medicine. So if someone is unconscious and cannot declare their sex, how do the doctors know? Do they flip a coin and hope for the best?

Thank you from the bottom of my heart nauticant for these wonderful threads.

Thanks @Charabanc for the Gina-likes-a-drink info on previous thread after my query 😄

Love it!

Yes, thank you nauticant for sterling services towards the upholding of women's rights. The more of us who know what has been going on (nurses forced to change in front of men for fear of sacking, patients unable to request single sex care) the better.

From the previous thread:

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

@nomas I wonder if you've lived a more sheltered life than I have? I have come across many people far more awful than SP, based on the evidence from the whole of this tribunal (I have observed over half of it, so not just relying on Tribunal Tweets who do not claim a verbatim transcription). Some of those people were extremely polite and respectable. Not a hint of racism or sexism or any other ism to be seen. None of them worked as a nurse for 30 years, including on night shifts in A&E dealing with patients in the most distressing of circumstances.

Were they better people because on the surface they came across as 'good' people? One of them turned out to have sexually abused several young women. I had no idea he was doing that, and he fooled a lot of people. So my experience tells me not to judge someone on appearances. Most people are are mixture of positive and negative characteristics. We are all heavily influenced by the environments we find ourselves in, particularly our 'formative yeras'.

I did wonder about that person. She maybe backed off after second thoughts overnight. Given the hell of SP having her character annihilated, after the other 2 nurses yesterday very quickly had their own character & motivations exposed for the world to see, I’m honestly not surprised. I don’t think there’s a single witness who gave evidence who came out the other side without a blemish. It’s been a brutal, bruising case all round.

I still think SP’s legal case is solid in terms of work place regs, EA2010 & FWS judgement. What the rest of the noise around the case results in, we’ll find out in a few months.

There’s been quite a lot of conduct that may well be acted upon once the judgement comes in & honestly, I’m not sure how ‘worth it’ the character assassination tactics will end up being. If a chunk of staff are all up on conduct charges, when they’re struggling with staff shortages, I honestly can’t see how the means justifies the end for NHSF. All to ‘steer the narrative’ away from their failed leadership, failed (non-existent) policies, failures in legal awareness & just appalling levels of toxicity within their workplace.

It seems wildly unfair to me that private messages were brought into evidence by one side and not the other. I realise this was because the evidence was provided by a witness in the case, but does any sentient observer actually think that DUs WhatsApp isn't a festering pit of nastiness?

If SP were to be barred from practice for private comments then the whole tribunal process is poisoned.

Lins, do you not think you should stop fishing for gossip now? You've already dropped Sandie in it, and look how that's turned out for you. If you're gonna start on me, remember I've got the Benidorm chat saved too.

Of course it isn’t an unusual thing to do. I changed jobs when I was 51, one of the first things I did was look at the menstrual health/menopause policy. What’s the point in having a policy to protect women who menstruate if no one looks at it and avails themselves of the advice and protection it offers. Particularly given how impacted some women are by peri-menopause, and menopause, and how recently employers have actually considered this and had a policy about it.

I wonder too if it was a relatively new policy following the Scottish government’s women’s health plan, which was published late 2021. There’s no smoking gun there. Why would SP not refer to a policy to check her sex based rights? If only there was a similar policy to protect her other sex based rights.

Trying to catch up.

From the previous thread - did we have Big Girl Pants on the list of words and phrases?

Did JR play a blinder at the end? Well she certainly blackened Sandie's character which almost certainly would have swayed a jury against Sandie. But there was a panel and not a jury, and the panel are experts and will almost certainly have seen cases where people go to tribunals saying that they were sacked because of racism, so they should be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Since this case started, not only have we had the Supreme Court judgement, we are seeing more and more cases being won which turn on GC views. There was the man at Porton Down, who I think last week won his case for Constructive dismissal for holding GC views. Someone settled a case yesterday - I can't remember the name. Then there is the Darlington nurses case coming up. Sporting bodies are beginning more and more to rule that women's sport is for biological women and handily a cheek swab would out the Uptons of the world.

My impression is that we are hearing less and less of TWAW shouted noisily at us, and NC has also managed to debunk the TRA's favourite of dragging DSDs into their argument.

TWANW and no, I don't want to be in a changing room with a bloke.

Edited to correct typo.

I cautiously agree with this.

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

She doesn’t need to be a nice person, someone you’d have a drink with, or go on holiday with. I’ve been very vocal about my views on her racism - and I stand by my comments, there’s no place for racism in the caring professions.

She does, however have the right to privacy and dignity in the workplace. She does have the right to be treated fairly in accordance with workplace policies and employment law. She does have the right to recourse through the tribunal system, to a fair hearing and - if it finds in her favour - the right to fair compensation.

No matter what your view of her may be, she has had a long career in nursing, which is going to be very hard for her to continue with. That was the case long before issues of racism were raised - the level of vitriol directed at her would make it hard for her to continue in nursing.

Would I want her caring for me and mine? No. The same could be said for every medic involved in this case. Does she deserve to have her career ended because of her taking them to tribunal? Absolutely not. Does she deserve to have her career ended because of racism? Possibly, but that’s not the question for this tribunal.

I hope she wins. I hope whatever award is made is enough to have made this shit show worthwhile. If she does I’ll raise a glass in her honour.

Yes- I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be BFFs with SP if I met her in real life, but so far the evidence against her seems to be “bitchy on group chat and shares ugly racist memes with appreciative audience”.

In comparison Rs 1 and 2 appear to have falsified evidence, they appear to be littered with the worst kind of snobs, who are barely aware of the existence of a 30+ year veteran nurse until it’s time to turf her out (and isn’t that a form of prejudice), appear to be willing to make stuff up if it suits their case and submit it to a court, and turn on a friend - a friend close enough to go on holiday with, no less- as soon as it was advantageous to do so.

Nurses and doctors aren’t angels, they’re just people, and they can say and do stupid and abhorrent things. 30+ unblemished years in A and E is no joke, it counts for something. I still think if it came down to it, I’d rather SP looking after me in A and E at 2am, than the array of rogues, cowards and grifters on the other side.