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

You probably don’t need any more jaw-drop moments @nauticant but there was that point - in KS's evidence, I think? - where it appeared that DU had offered to help write hospital policy (and it was presumably received as a serious suggestion, although I don’t think it happened ).

Oh wow, I'd missed that - probably because it reads perfectly normally to me, that TW are men. This is the tribunal that keeps on giving - even when you think you've spotted all the bloopers, there are more waiting to be found!

Here's the original article

Sick Scots nurse struck off after being caught with 13,000 child abuse images of young boys - Daily Record

On a second reading I do note that 13,000 images became 1,300 in the body but the claims are

His home was raided and a laptop containing a total of 1,374 images, of which 454 were of the most depraved level, was seized.

Investigators also found that he had shared some of the images with 11 other perverts in a Yahoo chat group between October 2007 and August 2012.

But judging by the language, the article may be click-reporting

Presumably the transgender policy as written by Dr Upton (and Isla Bumba) would just have read "Trans Women Are Women. The End."

Possibly with a footnote about how biological sex is a nebulous dog whistle and nobody really knows what sex they are anyway.

@nauticant Another jaw dropper.
Sandie was called in for a meeting but not told it was a disciplinary and therefore not told or able to bring union or legal representative with her.

There are so many jaw droppers.

I'd forgotten IB's blithe announcement that she didn't know anything about the Stonewall champions scheme. So she was useless at the bit of the job that she thought mattered, as well as all the dull stuff about disability and age and religion and so on.

The statistics are interesting but personally I don't see this as relevant to the case. Sandie wanted privacy and dignity from men when changing for work, irrespective of what exact statistical risk is.

Suppose extremely short men over 75 were found to be very low risk to women compared to other men. We wouldn't be letting them in the women's changing room on those grounds simply because they are male.

I think they want something to go to appeal. So it gives a legal precedence.

Banging on the NHS audit drum again, but:

This is part of NHS policy. Many trust policies state that if there is a conflict between a trans person and someone who would rather not share single sex accommodation with them (for reasons of that making it no longer single sex), trust staff are encouraged to ask the trans person for suggestions for activities or exercises that could be carried out to help educate the non-trans person.

I kid you not in the slightest bit.

A man sobs down the ward
He says, "Why am I soft in the middle now?
Why am I soft in the middle?
It must mean I'm really a girl
I need a photo-opportunity
I want total validation
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard"

Notetaker, notetaker
Nurses on night shift
Guarding the women's door
She's an emailer, emailer
Get data logs away from me
You know, I don't find this stuff amusing anymore

I will be your bodyguard
I'll say you're my favourite girl
I can call you Bethy
And Bethy, when you call me
You can call me Searle
Call me Searle

A man sobs down the ward
He says, "Why am I short of attention?
Got to get me some more attention
And whoa, my tribunal's so long
Where's my wife and posse?
What if I die here?
Who'll be my validator?
Now that my validation is gone, gone"

He made some notes contemporary
With some sixth-best choice photoshop
All along, along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations

I will be your bodyguard
I'll say you're my favourite girl
I can call you Bethy
And Bethy, when you call me
You can call me Searle
Call me Searle

It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's a Queered World
Maybe it's his first time around
He can't control the language
He's facing Naomi
He is a real woman

He is surrounded by the sound, sound
Women in the locker room
Pre-judging investigations
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the EDI leads
Spinning in infinity
He says, "Avoiding me is violence."

I will be your bodyguard
I'll say you're my favourite girl
I can call you Bethy
And Bethy, when you call me
You can call me Searle
Call me Searle

Which bit of expecting a woman to stay while you take your clothes off, or requiring a woman take her clothes off in front of you is not sexual harassment?

When can a man legitimately require a woman to stay in a small space with him while clothes are removed? Doctors usually retire behind a screen, and have a chaperone.

Another 'WTF have I just heard' moment for @nauticant was Isla Bumba declaring emphatically 'women can rape men'. This was such a piece of self-evident idiocy that NC just let it lie there for all to see before moving on.

I felt that she would have thought it was a dangerous area to go near in Cross, better to feign ignorance than have what little you know picked through by counsel.

She was terrible, but what does it say that people like her are sitting in £50k jobs? Sadly, I imagine she's far from the only one.

What...the...actual...FUCK?!!!!

I don't know if this counts as jaw-dropping but the ruling that both sides could use the pronouns they felt comfortable with made a huge difference to NC's questioning.

👏

I don’t doubt it for a moment, TwoLoons - I've been following the audit thread with ever-mounting horror (and what a magnificent achievement it is). That this is happening needs to be highlighted.

@nauticant Also the timing of the gross misconduct/disciplinary meeting that they wanted Sandie to attend just after the first part of the tribunal started, when usually all such meetings would be adjourned until after an ET has concluded.

Then clearing her the day before the second part started.

The pressure they put Sandie under must have been absolutely horrific. No wonder her and her dear mum rocked up at the MPs office like two frightened rabbits.

Sandie must have had a fair few sleepless nights worrying about everything especially in those early days before she got in touch with sex matters.

@NoBinturongsHereMate

That song!! Amazing 👏👏👏

She may have been scared initially, but I think Sandie must have have gained resilience through this. She kept her head held high throughout. She didn't deflect or deny the comments on group chats and must have been aware anything could be publicly exposed and the pressure for her family.
She's a woman on a mission to highlight that men shouldn't be in female spaces and has thrown so much in that there's nothing to stop her now. If this takes months and months more and needs appeals so what, provided her backer continues to support her?

Just played it back again with the backing track; strongly recommended! 😁

Anyone else wondered what day to day life is like in the Fife emergency department this last week amongst the staff.

I would love to be a fly on the wall, people watching all those witnesses and tribunal named people now they’re back together in the workplace. Watching how they act after being put through the wringer by NC and having their lies, nastiness, idiocy and malpractice exposed to the world. I would like to think some of them are running scared and have had some very troubled nights’ sleep.

I do also wonder whether any of them have reflected on how their actions really look to the general public outside their toxic bubble and questioned whether perhaps they were wrong.

Which is terrible policy, even knowing they start from the point that TWAW and takes precedence over any other concerns.

It's appalling to expect someone who's ill enough for a hospital stay to start helping educate other people. The last thing I'd have wanted when a hospital inpatient was to come up with exercises about how not to discriminate against me for my protected characteristics.

It's taking the piss to expect a load of free labour from sick people, and would be so even if it were for something legitimate and not illegal. I don't understand how even a full on trans rights activist could find that acceptable.