NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #50

[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
Thread 49: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5383443-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-49 31 July 2025 to 8 August 2025

I hate to say this, nauticant, but if by any chance this goes to appeal, you might get there. 😬

Gosh, golden naughticantiversary. Who'd have thunk?

Sure @anyolddinosaur I should have explicitly excluded team sports where there's a risk to other players. I had in mind a social women's tennis league, darts, that sort of thing where some transwomen played and were a bit crap, so no issues.

R.e. why they haven't spoken up, look at what happened to many GC campaigners when they do! Plus, older transgenders likely have experienced serious discrimination in the past.

For quite a long time Jenny Randles couldn't say anything about anything as an expert on the paranormal without the reports in the papers telling us yet again that she was of course trans. It was very boring, and it led to her being treated quite unpleasantly at times.

Whereas now, Wikipedia doesn't mention it at all. I find this refreshing, if I am honest; trans was the least important thing about her, for decades, as far as I was concerned. And I did love it when the American spooks finally listed all the "UFO" sightings which had been planes of theirs being top secret all over the place, and she had called every single one of them right! And yes, I call her she and her – because I think she earned it; one of the few who has as far as I know harmed none. (No doubt someone will bob up to say this or that to prove me wrong, but she never offended or upset me, back in the eighties....)

@BeLemonNow If you want to have darts teams for women and men pretending to be women no-one is going to stop you doing that, you just cant call them a woman's team. And if you want to organise a tennis league for women and men who want to be thought of as women no-one will stop you doing that but you cant call it a woman's league because it isnt one. No matter how crap some men are they still have a biological advantage in most (all?) sport over women - certainly for tennis and darts. So them playing is unfair on the women who play.

Dont think I commented on people not speaking up but failure to do so has got us to where we are now. Unbridled TRAs have meant that people who would previously perhaps have been kind will no longer pretend.

The beauty of the Supreme Court judgment is that it says that (assuming the relevant criteria are met) you can't say groups or spaces are for women and then let male people in, and, in addition, if you call your group as being open to transwomen then you can't exclude other male people.

It is beautiful in its simplicity. Decide what your group is, in terms of its true essence, and then transparently comply with the Equality Act. No tricks, no subterfuge, no funny business.

Presumably, in the case of Fife, if they allow men in to the female changing room then it is unisex.
As there's a male changing room they would then need to create a female changing room?
(Or have a small special room for men who can't cope with the truth that's unisex).

The workplace health and safety law 1992, requires that employers provide separate toilet and changing facilities for men and women.

i suppose their is nothing to prevent them providing unisex facilities as an addition.

i suppose they could also provide facilities for men who think they are women, and vis versa, but the only thing that employers need to do is provide single sex facilities.

That's an additional factor. If the law says that you must provide single sex spaces, then you must comply with the law. But in doing so, what you put in place must comply with the SC judgment.

The trans activists have screwed up on a truly epic scale. The status quo the long-term transwomen were content with has been wrecked by the trans activists and unless there's a big turn around, they risk wrecking more in their interventions to reclaim the ground they've lost.

Even crap men still have male bodied advantage in tennis and darts.

Not to be rude but what are you on about? Men don't belong in any women's sports at any level.

Mixed sports? Aye craic on. Men's sports? Well yeah that's their category.

They can all just stay out of all women's sports at all levels. It's not theirs, it's for women and girls.

Didn't people who had the mental health issues about their sex previously just have to follow rules (males use men's loos etc)?
It's not discrimination to follow the rights afforded to your own sex.
The SC now says it was right all along that rights are there based on biological sex. So no one is legally saying discrimination happened to people with delusions about being the opposite sex.

NHS Fife are investigating relaxing the rules about needing to change at work and the possibility of allowing staff to wear uniforms home to change. Source - someone who works the and involved in the discussions.

Thereby undermining public confidence in the hospital’s commitment to infection control. They go from bad to worse in support of this nonsense.

Correct. Most of the staff I know there can see that but rather than tackle the actual issue, NHS Fife go and create an other one. The car crash continues.

Also, heard of another health board on the other side of Scotland this time where their Director of Nursing has recently told a trans member of staff to use ‘whatever space they feel is appropriate to them’ which has created issues for others inevitably. They really do not learn!

Maybe your source could make sure that the Infection Control Team are aware of the discussions. Contact info is on the NHS Fife website.

The norm in the rest of the NHS is that you are forbidden on pain of disciplinary procedure from travelling to or from work in your scrubs or other uniform. In various Trusts where I have worked they sent out reminders of this policy periodically.

Wow thread 50. Bloody hell @nauticant you need a medal. Or a present. Or both!

This has been like a TV drama, honestly the twists and turns and revelations. It's got it all! The incompetent bosses, the malevolent accuser, the put upon victim, the betrayal from a friend, court antics, lies, deception, hidden phone messages, everything.

My understanding is that there’s no actual evidence that travelling to work in uniform is an infection hazard, but that public perception is that it is. Laundering uniform at home might be problematic, though.
But surely no one would travel to and from work in surgical scrubs, and surely these are laundered on-site, if not disposable? So people will always have to get changed in and out of them at the hospital.

Are we going to have a party to celebrate 50 threads, or are we holding on for the century?

NHS Fife are investigating relaxing the rules about needing to change at work and the possibility of allowing staff to wear uniforms home to change. Source - someone who works the and involved in the discussions.

You would think that NHS Fife would have learnt by now. The Health and Safety Regs are still law however much they might wish that they were not.

There will still be some members of staff who need to change clothing which gets soiled in the course of their work, by an accident victim bleeding all over them for example.

Sounds a bit like HR or other staff without medical training pushing an unworkable solution

Always remember the trans rights card trumps everything including common sense

The norm in the rest of the NHS is that you are forbidden on pain of disciplinary procedure from travelling to or from work in your scrubs or other uniform.

I can imagine that Reception staff could easily be allowed to travel to work in Uniform and after all as soon as patients are booked in, they have to sit and wait with everyone else in their outdoor clothes. But medical staff, IMO no.

Going back a bit to the debate about the old fashioned trans identifying men who used to obey the rules and may have been discriminated against. IMO this is where it began to go wrong - with the Jan Morris's of the world - by all means use the new name, but Jan Morris was only ever a man, however much surgery he had. Ditto with "April Ashley" for those of us who remember far enough back.

As far as I remember with both of those, they had to go abroad to have their surgeries done; it could not be done legally in the UK.

If it had been confined to just those few people, I imagine that it wouldn't affect many of us and we would just try to let them live their lives as best they could all the while knowing that they weren't really women and it was difficult for them to find their place in society.

BTW for those who say they were OK in sport - they weren't very good so it was no problem - it was still a mixed sex team. That's fine if you know the rules - we have mixed doubles in tennis for a starter and it's not a problem.

Travelling to work from home in a clean uniform obviously poses no infection hazard. Travelling from work to home in a dirty uniform on the other hand...

A method of working has evolved over time. Mistakes were made and lessons learned.

Now there are proposals to significantly change the system - why?

New evidence for better infection control found?
Better process?
Other new technology?

All no

Reason? A biological man who believes he is a woman wants to use the women's changing rooms. If he can't his feelings will be hurt.

Sounds more like TRA at all costs than a carefully reasoned process update