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

Oh, VERY well spotted! I've been trying to fit some new lyrics to that song this afternoon and that completely bypassed me.

This BBC article certainly kept trying to downplay the FWS Supreme Court verdict.

He said it will be interesting to see the extent to which the Supreme Court ruling on gender impacts on the legal analysis in the judgment.
"However, the facts and issues in the Supreme Court case are entirely different," Mr Mitchell said. (Entirely different in what way, exactly? Only, I suppose, in that the FWS case was about GRCs, which DU doesn't have - making his case even weaker)

Whether the Supreme Court ruling affects the tribunal's findings is uncertain, as NHS guidance at the time of the complaint was that trans men and women were allowed to use the changing rooms that aligned with their gender identity. (But they were just clarifying what was always the law. And self-ID has NEVER been law in this country.)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2vy2gkywmo

But surely the Supreme Court verdict applies here, and Sandie can't lose?

I'm not sure I can take all the credit

I've always liked yours too. I do enjoy a good username. I had what I considered to be a witty one not so long ago but the person it referenced sadly died. Now those were proper sad times.

Finally thanks to links posted here have seen the racist comments and jokes. Am now satisfied it is a class thing and not an evil bigot thing. As someone only more lately middle class champagne socialite-y that was the language of my youth, my whole family used those words and still do, everyone at school did, and at the local university, too. Dark humour for sure.

I do have a couple of actual racist family members who have said some quite sinister things about what they think should happen to black people. But in those kind of circles the P and Ch words are used as almost friendly. I had a Chinese best mate who insisted we use the word about his parents shop.

They aren't words I would use now, but I dont live in that area anymore. I wonder if I still would if I'd never moved away to 'better myself'. Sometimes I think I'm not better than those people anyway, far from it. Perhaps not the actual racists, as they are also happy to scam money off their family. Everyone else in my family just normal hardworking folk, cleaners, drivers, factory workers, supermarket workers. They think they are superior based mainly on the fact they never needed a council house. They reserve their worst for people who dare to claim benefits. Foreigners are 'alright really when you get to know them, at least they aren't scroungers'. I imagine Sandie to be of this ilk and I'm pretty sure that's a good 70-80% of the country. Or most countries... It is a good idea for them to have rights in the workplace.

That article is so off-base. As far as I recall, DU's life, relatives and opinions were not mentioned once during the trial, nor in the media - not even the rumours of whether he was troublesome in his previous job, or whether he has a GRC, or whether he is a Trump supporter or has some other flavour of politics. "Since then, her life, her body and her identity have been dissected and dragged through countless media articles." I must have been reading different articles then, as I have missed this completely.* If "at no point did we hear from her [sic] in the media, at no point was her [sic] story told,"* well whose fault is that? Surely the author of this article could have done that? Or maybe DU doesn't actually want to tell his story.

Meanwhile, SP's lesbian daughter, chats about Benidorm, potential racism, possible support for Trump, experience of sexual assault and menstrual flooding were all brought up in court, and extensively covered by the media. None of these, nor DU's "humanity" or supposedly "awful experience" are actually relevant to the case - should a man be entitled to use a women's changing room, or not?

Thought the BBC article was more balanced than usual. R.e. will Sandie "win", who knows:

It's been very clear that NHS Fife hasn't treated Sandie appropriately when this complaint was made against her and I would expect damages related to that.

Am less sure about her claim Dr. Upton being in the changing room was legally sexual harassment.

Probably the most important thing, though is that she was cleared of gross misconduct eventually by NHS Fife. The case is essentially defensive in that sense.

Standard: am not a lawyer what do I know disclaimer 😉

Just chatting about this, and the suggestion has been made to try and write alternative lyrics for The Laws of My Administration (from Duck Soup) by Groucho Marx.

I've lots of travelling in the next few days, but we may get to try something out. In the meantime, any related ideas welcomed :)
Edited for typos

For @nauticant , right at the start, when DU arrived in A&E he told someone, probably KS, that he'd be using the F CR. Because that's what every other new female staff member does, yes??
So by this statement alone, DU has condemned himself - he knows he's a man.

I meant official mail from their HR department like her suspension letter. Business mail should have been sent directly to her, recorded delivery, not via her workplace.

Thanks again for everyone's personal "highlights" of this case. I'll have plenty to refer to when I try to explain to people I know quite how just plain wrong all of this was.

Coming late to the thread, but will there be any repercussions for JR for breaching ethical standards? As a non lawyer it sounds like a pretty serious thing for a KC to do in court.

For a first offence of possessing images, any custodial sentence is likely to be suspended. You will only go to prison for a first offence if you are convicted of possessing category A images (the most serious) and there are aggravating factors. If you are convicted of producing and/or distributing images that fall into category A, you are going to prison.

If true, the fact they vetted her post when she had started legal action against them is deeply problematic. It would have given them the opportunity to filter out evidence that may have supported her, and possibly to find out privileged information.

Re "what if we got a good look at Dr Upton's wassap chat logs"

I think it's worth noting that his friends haven't dropped him right in it. At all.

Wee Sondie hasn't had such luck. What's her face that dropped Sondie in it is the very definition of "a pish neebor"

I'll have to check the article again. I think a lot of the images were class A and he had shared with a number of other people

I just don't get the logic. Almost every public toilet I have visited in the UK displays a sign if they are being cleaned by a member of the opposite sex. There's a reason for that - women don't expect to see men in the toilets and so they are warned when they might come across a man who is there because it's his job.

NHS Fife holds the position that not one was it right that Dr Upton should be in the toilets, but that they also didn't even need to mention it because Dr Upton is female and nobody would know he's male anyway.

He was only convicted of three offences. The reports I have seen do not specify what the offences were, so I don't know if he was convicted of sharing the images or, indeed, if the convictions relate to the most serious images. Also, the sentencing guidelines only apply to England and Wales. Scotland is developing its own sentencing guideline. They haven't produced any guidelines for these offences yet.

Can't they just Google and copy E&W guidelines? That is, I believe, the accepted Scottish way of doing these things.

(Im joking, im JOKING! Stop throwing haggises at me).

I think sandie’s legal team really want the harassment claim against Upton to succeed.
This could then serve as a warning to other trans people thinking of flouting the law that they can be held personally accountable, not just the employer or service provider who let them in the CR

That's pretty much what happened in Scottish schools with regard to Diversity Policies....

@Lougle NHS Fife holds the position that not one was it right that Dr Upton should be in the toilets, but that they also didn't even need to mention it because Dr Upton is female and nobody would know he's male anyway.

Perhaps they do believe that DU is female - some of the witnesses weren't too sure what sex they themselves were! In fact, the only person whose sex they were sure about was DU. Nobody would know he's male - this is what KS said and IB implied.

NC - will put it, DU is obviously a man
KS - no
NC - under oath, credibility important, saying you woundn't know DU was a TW unless told?
KS - wouldn't have known what sex DU assigned at birth
(Well, perhaps strictly speaking she wouldn't, since "assigned at birth" is a weaselly crock-of-shit phrase).

NC But DU looks male
IB That's your opinion

Actually, they didn't know much about anything. IB, the DEI lead:

NC What do you know c the Stonewall div champion scheme/
IB Don't know anything about the scheme in detail. Presumably its a kind of
partnership?

NC And only men capable of rape
IB No Not true
(But it is true, except for joint enterprise, as it has to involve a penis.)

NC You are saying men in general are greater threat to women than vice
IB TW are different from other men in level of threat they present
(We on here know better than that!)

NC You are saying men in general are greater threat to women than vice
IB TW are different from other men in level of threat they present

"...because Dr Upton is female and nobody would know he's male anyway."

Even DU knows he isn't female, otherwise he would have had no need to tell KS that he was going to use the F CR, would he?

Going back to Nanny Ogg a bawdy verse seems appropriate ahem hedgehogs ahem.

Hopefully by making this batshit claim NC can utilise the stats that show that trans identifying men do not offend at a rate that is less than other men without it being dismissed as irrelevant.