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

Oh, the classism absolutely oozes out of this one. I'm hundreds of miles away and I can still smell it from here.

That was not what I was responding to. I was responding to that poster’s criticism, who said she isn’t qualified for the job, in contradiction to the actual job criteria.

Thank you, I was so pissed off hearing KS brazenly tell the tribunal she felt it was acceptable and essential that she send the email. Out of all the evidence produced this one I feel is one of the most sinister. Using her seniority to force team the entire A&E consultants to side with BU. Disclosing private and personal employee details. I do hope this results in more than a telling off.

I found the evidence of the last two days discomforting and wanted to hear from SP before making a final call. It seems clear that in private SP demonstrates racist and transphobic views but manages to draw a line professionally. I would struggle working with someone I knew to hold those views / uses that language and expect that influenced people's responses. That said, SP did not use derogatory language when she spoke to DU. This speaks even more to the importance of following proper processes - they guide you regardless of your personal opinions about the people involved. Single sex spaces matter. I'm placing my trust in NC to focus on the heart of this case.

I am quite sure the tribunal will reach its decision without considering speculative 'what ifs' such as her potentially being dismissed for racism. There is no reason to suspect that she was being investigated by NHS Fife for anything other than her supposed transphobia and alleged patient safety incidents and she was cleared before this session of the tribunal began.

I agree but in the real world staff rarely read memos about social media use. The word “ban” tends to ruffle feathers and may prompt discussion as to why chat groups are not safe.
Our children are now well educated in social media and it’s safe use ( whether they practice it is another matter), but for many of us who have no experience of social media until the last ten years or so it’s a ticking bomb.
The WA group SP took part in was a group of 40-50yr olds who grew up pre digital when gossip and opinion was expressed verbally. They saw WA as a convenient extension of this and had no idea that it was all safely saved for use against them in the future.

The older generations are given no formal education re SM but we are often quick to point it out to our children who have. Maybe new policies should be introduced in NHS alongside proper training to safeguard confidentiality. We have mandatory training in keeping patient info private, based on this case and probably many more ETs that haven’t been publicly heard, the use of chat groups in the work environment needs to be reviewed and cautioned. We have rules on an anonymous chat forum we should have rules for private chats within work environments.

I agree.

Genuine question as so many different POVs have been shared and I’m concerned this might be aimed at me. As we’ve seen from SP’s situation veiled comments don’t help any of us do better… could you give a couple of concrete examples of the problem posts please?

Some people turn up at a&e without good reason, do you want everyone to live in fear of ever saying no you dont actually need to be here?

That exactly my point about how racial and prejudice bias can enter the system. If a Pakistani Muslims mother's concern about their daughter is dismissed and goes onto even die that's not in of itself evidence of racial bias.

And they might not even realise that is a factor as there will be others like A&E being busy.

You can quickly Google how health outcomes are worse for ethnic minority groups to see how serious an issue this is. I would hope, as it interacts with feminism and sexism for all women, that it would have been better understood in this forum.

Sandie clearly has strong prejudice against Pakistani Muslims which as well are a pretty small minority in Fife. It's not just jokes it's hatred so strong she's been reported and doesn't know if she said she wanted to post bacon through the letterbox of a new mosque at a work lunch.

So yes she very well may act on racist beliefs such as Pakistanis are dishonest and shouldn't be over here etc. etc and treat them less favourably.

I am assuming you are White and would really ask you educate yourself on racism before dismissing these concerns.

You were raising a reasonable point for discussion until crowbarring in the silly, evidence free claim about ageism and sexism at the end.

The screenshot you linked to, which is useful btw so thank you, states that an essential criteria for recruitment is knowledge of relevant legislation. Bumba's own evidence is that even some time later, she didn't have that. She didn't understand the need to consider the Article 8 rights of women employees, for example. That knowledge is a vital part of such a role, and not 'very basic' at all, even if we were to agree for the sake of argument with your take on what 'will be a SME' means.

It's fundamental to the assessment of damages that you consider what ifs. One of those is likely to be potential damage to employment, retention and promotion prospects, then other factors that would affect them would have to be taken into account.

I agree there may only be so much that warnings from employers and regulators can do. The ticking time bomb analogy is apt! It's still a bad idea for them to pretend they can ban people from using social media and what's app groups with work colleagues, not least because it raises the possibility that people will be pissed off and defiant due to overreach.

This should be differentiated from private chats within work environments, as the employer obviously has jurisdiction there.

Have not caught up on the threads, but the thing that mystifies me is the repeatedly going on holiday with people you claim to loath.

What happened in Benidorm?

Absolutely right of course !

What happened in Benidorm stays in Benidorm unless you want to read 3000 pages of chat to find out

What happened in Benidorm?

I don't recall.

😆

We did though hear mention @GinaWhoLikesADrink has some interesting fancy dress choices.

I would feel sorry for anyone crawling through my 2000 pages of WhatsApps for posts. It's extremely boring.

Guess it's something AI can be useful for, except for privacy issues.

But why would you laugh at someone obviously being racist? If she disapproved half as much as she was letting on in the court she would have posted a very different reaction indeed.

She laughed because she was joining in.

She obviously handed them over to JR or JR / Fife wouldn't have known about them.

She obviously didn't think it through or that NC and Sandie would already have gone through that group chat with a fine tooth comb.

I think JR should have looked after her witnesses a bit better. I don't think any of her witnesses have come out the other end of a Naomi grilling spotlessly clean.

I suspect that they treated it as you would a nickname. It sticks harder if you try & fight it, you end up going with the flow.
Or from my experience, the way people react when I say I'm hard of hearing: 'Pardon?' so many of them say, which was tedious, until I found that I'd get a laugh by saying it first. So again, easier to deal with by going along with it.

I suspect nothing. The internal investigation which was dismissed may have been far more interesting. Maybe the WA group was threatened and since it is a private group ( see title of group) it was not deemed admissible to support the hearsay. But because it was “discovered” and contained a lot of evidence that threatened the reputation of all participants then the shit hit the fan and friendships were ruined. None of them were happy about its disclosure but SP needed to prove that she wasn’t the only one with racist views.
SP certainly didn’t come out of it smelling of roses but, by association, neither did the rest. Remember that the WA were still active until this year. The racist jokes were some time ago. Any one of them could have closed it down if they’d wanted to if posts were uncomfortable or distasteful. Or they could have left. Its existence says more about the group than the individual.

Is this the FayeRC case?

If so I think we should all offer as much support, emotionally and financially to this.

The more cases that are brought to light, the more likely we are to get some binding case law that protects all women.

We have seen the costs of the SP employment tribunal and know that this is something that inevitably is going to need significant financial resource.

In other thoughts I am also pissed that final stuff has been again deferred. I'm starting to think both lawyers should be automatically fined if they run over.

Or as in this case if suddenly "new" evidence ahem WhatsApp posts appears last minute.

@SadSadTimes I agree it's classic post hoc justification. She might believe it now but it isn't true. As Sandie said she "got a laugh" emoji. People often react to the last comment.

I also thought NC final take down of binary sex was fab and if course got lost on Sandie coming back to the stand instead of just moving on to final verbal thingy.

But it wasn't 'discovered', sneaky Lin took screenshots to show the board.

Who would expect that to happen if they were in a private group with just close friends. These were friends that worked together, that you had confided in, they had celebrated your 50th birthday with you and had holidayed with you numerous times.