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

Are there any legs to the thought that knowledge of messages from the holiday chat group may have precipitated the sudden suspension of SP?

Perhaps sources close to HR already knew that Sandie had racist views / was an all round bad egg and so quickly moved to suspension because she was an undesirable
Maybe they could not use the holiday chat as part of the suspension justification as it also implicated 'good people'
They were then left scrabbling around searching for other evidence of e.g. patient mistreatment.

Do we know if the holiday chat / racist views formed part of the internal investigation that cleared SP?

So what exactly were you implying when you made the comment about the word I used?

nauticant missed out relatives from her list

The legal team in the large organisation I work for appears to be composed of slippery buggers who never answer emails or the phone let alone give actual legal advice.

I would haved loved to be a fly on the wall around whoever gave legal advice to NHSF at any stage of this mess, but especially around the time they sanctioned that Friday-at-4pm statement.

Signing in. Thanks @nauticant

I've never asked advice from an inhouse NHS legal dept but judging from how cheap & terrible IT & HR are I suspect the NHS Fife legal office would be pretty budget.

No. Anything said in court is covered by absolute privilege. As unpleasant as it may be, being publicly trashed by the other side's counsel and witnesses are a price you have to pay for making a claim, or defending one.

Bumping this.

Faye has quite a way to go in a short time. I'll be checking the shed for a few reluctant seeds to get in before summer passes into autumn.

No not buying it.

They jumped to suspension to silence her. They were hoping short suspension, stop her drumming up support (and giving us a headache if the nurses walkout on strike), he finishes his stint, we clear Sandie of whatever and we all get back to normal.

Crumbs under the carpet, no letter, no evidence, she'll be happy its over with, nothing to see here!

I wasn't implying anything. I was completely open in asking you to justify the verb you used. A verb which in my lifetime has particularly applied to the apartheid SA regime and in recent living memory for others a loaded term. That none of my family nor me have been remotely affected changes nothing about calling you out on the language you seemingly carefully use and then have a strop about.

No. For this to be possible NHSF would have to have a paper trail prior to SPs suspension that mentioned the Benidorm group messages. Given the suspension didn’t even have the potential professional misconduct allegations it’s an absolute no.

Additionally, there was no mention when the suspension was reviewed. You cannot retrofit evidence to justify what you did.

I don’t know why you’re being so gratuitously rude. You certainly were to @TheKeatingFive , who used the word “segregation” innocuously and perfectly correctly. Now you’re being rude to me.
I suggest you invest in a dictionary and don’t try to impugn people by attributing attitudes and opinions to them that you disapprove of and that there’s no evidence that they hold, just because they know the meanings of words that you don’t.
Gratuitous - done without good reason
Innocuous - not harmful or offensive
Impugn - call into question the honesty of something

As @LadyBracknellsHandbagg might have said:

Don't make me tap the sign:

Sorry, nrtft don't know if this has been posted

https://archive.ph/KoiRP

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25357082.woman-scotland-intervene-sandie-peggie-tribunal/

FWS taking issue with Big Sondie's apparent belief regarding the SC ruling.

I am reminded of Tony Hoare's famous saying:
There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.
I feel the same may apply to legal arguments, and that we may see NC on one side of this and JR on the other!

Agree: segregation has indeed been used in an offensive context, but it is really a completely neutral word meaning to separate people or things according to a characteristic or for a purpose.

If it helps to settle nerves, I actually do segregate raw from cooked foods, and lots of places of worship have segregated seating. Prisoners are also segregated when they are separated from the main body of the prison - isn't a slang term for this "in the seg"?

No offence intended to either party, but I'd hate for a useful word to be lost to the language.

Surely this is the type of claim that JKR's fund is set up for?

Thank you for this. Very interesting to have some insight into media decisions on their coverage. And great to see the shout out to TT who have been a game changer.

Yep I get that. But surely a lot of all these open discussions is to call out the responses to show what they are.

Going back to the last thread, someone said that 'wear what you want' meets 'woman-face' but isn't that the whole point of being gender critical?

Wear what you want..it's just clothes. Wear makeup if you want... It's just makeup. Behave how you want - gendered behaviour is just stereotype.

Just don't tell people that you're female if you're male, and don't expect to use facilities reserved for females.

This is becoming quite bizarre. Oh well.

Just listening to this now. Sonia Sodha is raging. A fantastic listen. The first 20 minutes is about a different story.

I used the word in a completely correct context that has absolutely nothing to do with apartheid.

Jeez, give it fricking rest. I am sick to death of these grossly dishonest attempts to smear and obfuscate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with talking about sex segregation.

She's fantastic