NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #49

[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 over 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 more 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
Thread 48: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5382317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-48 29 July 2025 to 31 July 2025

My heart strangely fails to bleed.

Didn't JR question Upton too? If she thought his story, his view of his humanity, his side of the story would be useful for the defence of this case wouldn't she have enabled him to set it out in court for everyone to hear? I mean, she went into every detail of SP's story, why not DU?

I have a mutual with RS. I keep meaning to ask her to give him a kick up the arse on this topic, but I don't see her very often.

Or even better, send him to FWR.

@Notnatacha There are not enough eyerolls in the world for that. Thanks for sharing!

It's possible to support Sandie and still feel some sympathy for Upton. His problems are of his own making but there were plenty of people who could have helped him see he was being an arse and instead happily acclaimed him and encouraged him to make everything worse. Unfortunately I doubt if any of them would change their behaviour in future.

I do wonder from time to time what Upton’s parents think about how this has all turned out. I recall someone on here who was watching the tribunal at the time, saying that Upton’s father looked shocked when Naomi put it to Upton’s that making up patient safety claims could be career limiting, or similar words.

If Upton was my son, I would have read every single article in the press and followed the tribunal live, or at least picked up the TT each day. I wonder if he believes his son is really a woman and that he didn’t do anything wrong.

Unquestioning approval of people's life choices, particularly around adopting gender identity, combined with the recent fashion for framing someone looking crosswise at you as actual endangerment, has not done anyone any good.

Being online too much enables a degree of self-centredness that was not really achievable in the past, except for the very rich.

I do hope no one falls for that tripe about Upton being silenced.

The whole case was about him trumpeting his vulnerability and her unkindness. Mostly fictional.

The trouble is the people who needed to tell him he was being an arse was his family. He'd have threatened his employers if they'd tried to say "you're in the men's Beth."

Sandie got more coverage this time because Beth hasn't shown his face.

The other thing Fife never seemed to consider was yes suspending Sandie deals with the immediate issue on this rotation, what happens when he moves a the next Sandie comes along? Or when he finishes training and gets a permanent role. There's always going to be someone who will object to him in the changing rooms.

Boswell’s diary suggests his parents were weary of the drama.

@DeanElderberry
Being online too much enables a degree of self-centredness that was not really achievable in the past, except for the very rich.
And look how that frequently turned out.

yes exactly. Dr U was quite correct I assume (makes sense) about the order of safety. But in A&E where there are drunks and people out of their mind on drugs or possibly an acute MH crisis, safety really means physical safety, rather than your feelings (and identity ffs).

Oh yes, Upton did get to put his side of the story! Who can forget "I am biologically female"?

Apart from his family the one who should have been telling him was Dr Searle. A woman crying over a few unkind words would have been told she'd face much worse in a&e and perhaps it was not the right specialty for her. Upton might have tried asking for a different supervisor but the power imbalance there is such that even Upton would have thought twice about criticising a more senior doctor.

A parent's feelings could be very complex. Unconditional love, embarrassment, guilt, pain, fear of rejection, fear for DU's mental health, concern for daughter in law, anger. Possibly some understanding of SP. Even if they are misunderstanding the whole situation and just blaming SP, I have some sympathy for them. In their position I would be internally screaming, confused and would be trying to cope with very dark thoughts at times.

I once worked with an exceptionally manipulative person who could not take any constructive feedback at all and was also litigious. Sadly for this person, it meant no one ever gave them the feedback they needed to actually improve and succeed. Sadly, and not surprisingly, for the rest of us, this person is now in a senior equalities role in a Scottish local authority. 🙄

Boswell’s diary is a work of fiction.

Trans people are being encouraged to be self-centred by the constant coddling by institutions. Meanwhile the rigid imposition of gender ideology by those same institutions is turning ordinary people against trans people and likely increasing actual transphobia. Fetch the tumbrils, indeed!

It didn't have to be like this 😔

Like Solomon Grundy, why wouldn’t being treated like a sacred caste fail to confirm or induce a belief that you are a sacred caste.

Even when high status is appropriate to someone’s achievements , it seems as if it can be risky for good mental health.

I cannot imagine a single thing worse for Upton and his family than to have his existence and humanity shared in the press right now. He has paid a higher price than most for his egregious work behaviour, but his doggedness in disrupting an entire A&E department when he was the only one who knew how much he had lied just beggars belief. In a just world, this would progress to a GMC Fitness to Practise hearing and see him struck off.

The person trumpeting 'Poor Beth' in the press isn't really thinking of Beth Upton, who is probably in hiding from the same press right now. They are thinking entirely of themselves and their people, and what a terrible PR disaster this has been for their cause.

I still wonder what input the Equality Network had into this mess. Didn't Vic Valentine submit a statement? S/he didn't appear in court and I don't know what the statement said.

Poor Beth didn't have his group chat messages dissected, or any conversations with friends at lunch reported on. Also he missed out on being interrogated by Naomi Cunningham on the stand after the IT guy's testimony - Mr "I know what contemporaneous means" knows about as much about what contemporaneous means as he does about what being a woman means!

I can't get that excited about the bra-wearing either way. If TW take cross-sex hormones then that causes breast area swelling, plus I'd expect TW to want to wear some padding. So it's not necessarily a sexual fetish. Though it could be and could is enough on a safeguarding basis.

Genderbollocks apart, Upton lied about a nurse's conduct in a clinical environment in order to compromise that nurse's career and livelihood. There's no getting past that, it's absolutely appalling and suggests that he isn't temperamentally suited to sharing a workplace with other people. (I've worked with a couple of doctors over the years who would stab other people in the back for no obvious reason other than to create drama, so this issue has properly given me the shudders.)

I agree. This case, and particularly Dr Upton's actions (his behaviour with his colleagues, the lying and alleged doctoring of evidence, his manner and words during the tribunal) have been disastrous for the trans right movement in the UK. He has single-handedly done more than anyone else for the gender critical cause.

I wonder if Beth will be disowned and dumped by the TRAs?