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

Tbf NHSF and Upton are her clients. Others are irrelevant.

This ☝

Until recently male sexually motivated voyeurism was universally recognised for what it was.

Until recently male sexual exhibitionism was universally recognised for what it was.

Until recently it was universally recognised that men who stole women's underwear were sexually motivated.

All three crimes (voyeurism, exhibitionism, theft) were known to be likely to be the start of a a pattern of escalation that led on to extreme sexual violence.

But suddenly a man who wears an item of women's underwear that has no practical function for him, ergo must be being used for titillation, who has asserted his right to perform intimate examination of a woman who has explicitly withheld consent to that, should be allowed to insist that a women takes her clothes off in an enclosed space with him, and that she be present in that enclosed space while he puts that fetish garment on display, must be treated as though he is a safe, non-weird person?

No thank you.

I can also care about the 100s of thousand of trans women who are abused and attacked.

Seriously? Where are they?

Isn't that the point where the liberal "dress how you want; present how you want" dictum comes up against the "woman-face" argument?

If this case were to need referral to a higher court, does the fact that an employee of Sex Matters was a witness have any impact on the ability of Sex Matters to act as an intervenor?

They aren’t:

thecritic.co.uk/neither-marginalised-abused-nor-vulnerable/

Witnesses are disposable. JR's owes nothing to them - her clients are DU and NHSF.

The same applies to NC, for that matter. There's a lesson here that if anyone is ever asked to give evidence, be aware you're not owed protection by either side, if it's expedient.

Exactly. No thank you will be reply if I'm ever called as a witness.

yes. My journey away from universal acceptance started with that 'I'm enjoying it' man. Once you've seen non-consenting women being an essential part of some men's sex-cosplay, you can't unsee it.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/03/my-life-in-sex

I'd like to know that too.

Yes, it looks like Jamie Doyle had the right idea. Very typical that the women in these cases are the ones who end up being filleted in court and beclowning themselves, while revealing their lack of integrity and poor practice.

YY.

What “100s of thousands of trans women are abused and attacked?” Where? Not in Scotland, or in Fife. Not in the UK. And who attacks them (in Brazil and Mexico) but men, often engaging them as prostitutes or involved in gangs and drugs in a world where life expectancy is awful for all, reflected in the crimes against trans women. But not here. Hyperbole and exaggeration do you no favours at all.

So to protect South American transwomen prostitutes Sandie Peggie has to undress in the presence of a male colleague. 👍

Thousands of TW are not being attacked and even if they were, the answer would not be to open up women's spaces to any bloke who wants in. And I'm not going to take moral lecturing from someone who thinks it is and that it's a sign of their superiority. I know we said it before, but I can't get over the bloody egos on these people. What on earth makes them think they're our moral tutors?

It should also be remembered that even in Brazil trans identified men are significantly less likely (by and order of magnitude) to be murdered than other men, or than women.

They're men.

a - You can sack anyone you want whenever you want for any reason. What you run the risk of of course, is if you have done so and that person takes you to a tribunal, you might have to compensate them if their case is proven. Hence why organisations employ HR to advise them on how to avoid this.
b - I've worked with rapists, people who tried to murder their parents, and all number of people who have committed all sorts of crimes, I've worked on construction sites and with many people whose opinions are more than a little fruity, 'unsavoury' as they say. I still managed to have a conversation with them and treat them as humans. This 'I wouldn't go for a drink with her', makes me think alot of people really think of themselves as Mary bloody Poppins. Until you turn over your bloody personal texts for inspection maybe stop being so bloody self-righteous. Honestly.
c - Female changing rooms and toilets are fitted out for females. Men do not, and will never need the same facilities as women. They do not need sanitary disposal units. They already have their own cubicles and urinals in the men's toilets. The money spent on this case, could have funded DU a brand new building for DU to piss/change in, this is an outrageous waste of taxpayers funds and whoever authorised it needs bloody sacking.
d - For those who spout about 'men can rape anyway so why use the ladies' seem to fail to understand that what men who use female spaces who aren't planning a rape that day, want, IS THE BLOODY REACTION FROM THE WOMEN. If there was nobody in there, they'd just use the mens'.

The much bigger issue would be Naomi Cunningham being Chair of the Board of Trustees for Sex Matters.

SM wouldn’t be able to be intervenors. But I highly doubt this case will get as far as the Supreme Court.

What would be the issue there?

There are so many disgusting things said by these people who somehow still think they are our moral superiors that it's hard to choose the most revolting of all, but "women get raped anyway so it doesn't matter if they get raped more if it affirms men's self image" is a strong contender. It's up there with "lesbians should accept dick if a man says so" and "reframe your trauma".

I find that a really interesting tension. I'm pretty firmly in the liberal camp on this, love a man who breaks stereotypes: skirts, nail varnish, eyeliner etc... But I find males wearing a bra they don't need pretty offensive. Because for many women we don't have a choice. The harassment and discomfort and restrictions to movement we'd experience without a bra would be a serious barrier to taking part in public life. And how prohibitively expensive bras can be, especially sports bras.

Can someone help me understand something about SP's suspension that I've not seen discussed? As a former public sector employee I was involved tangentially in a number of misconduct issues. Part of that process was to have someone in line management appointed as a support to the person under investigation and to provide pastoral care for them. They would not otherwise be involved in the investigation, but may attend hearings at the person's request. I've not seen any mention of someone appointed by NHS Fife in that role. I would not necessarily expect them to be a witness, but I would expect the support person to have been referred to by Fife as evidence that they tried to mitigate the impact of suspension and at least had some care for her wellbeing.

I doubt a court would allow Sex Matters to join the case as an intervenor when it would mean that on the same side there was NC as both counsel (Peggie) and client (as part of Sex Matters - instructing another counsel).

it would be hard for Sex Matters to successfully argue they have an independent interest and should be added to the case as a separate party when they’d be supporting their Chair of the Board’s case.

But as I said, v v v unlikely to get to the Supreme Court. Really don’t think there’s any way it will meet the requirement of needing a point of law definitively clarified.