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

from herald
11:29am
We're back. Ms Cunningham suggests the respondents are attempting to mount "a rearguard action to try to mend the damage done by the admissions of Kate Searle, Lottie Myles and Maggie Currar" about sex and gender.
"But sex is a well understood and medically socially salient binary," she argues.
She says: "Any normally developing child over the age of about five knows that to make a baby you need a mummy and a daddy, the mummy being a woman and the daddy being a man, and that those are different kinds of bodies that do different things in relation to baby making.
"It really shouldn't be necessary to spell such obvious truths out. The respondent's attempts to make those simple facts complicated deserve to be laughed at as much in 2025 as they would have been in 1995 1965 or even 1925."

From TT

female prison, then of course they need a policy to do so. X here - a policy that cannot exclude all tw from female prisons should not have been accepted. And would not have been accepted after FWS. A woman's prison is a SSS. Which is only lawful to exclude men by SSS.

From TT

Once you recognise that a woman's prison is SSS, then in the light of FWS, all men should be excluded. The obvious proposition that introducing men into a women's prison increases the risk of sexual assault on female prisoners.

Still on prisons but directing them to bundle pages, (I'm not following her line of argument particularly well, I think I drifted momentarily)

you need a mummy and a daddy, the mummy being a woman and the daddy being a man

How heteronormative 🙄😡

From NC's response to JR's subs it is clear that JR has made some terrible arguments in those subs 😬

The next case, is Croft v Royal Mail, which was about toilet facilities at work by a TiM, the CoA suggested that there might be a stage of transition to be entitled to use female facilities. It might be discrim if the TiM reached that stage to exclude him. Croft is a dead

A mother and father are necessary to "make" a baby.

Genital inspections

From TT

tter on 2 basis; it was before the GRC and before the FWS judgement. You may decide that is just as well, it failed to grapple with the stage of transition at which a TiM should use the female facilities. The Court seemed to envision transition as a medical process, the

She said "make a baby", not raise a family.

If you know how to make a baby without 1 egg and 1 sperm cell please inform the IVF industry.

What was that thing about interruptors?

employer would need to inquire as to what surgery and hormone treatment that TiM had had. And its is truly unpalatable to see that women's rights and privacy are based on the medical condition of a TiM.

That raises the spectacle of something the TRAs like to talk wildly about called genital inspections. And also that a rule restricting men from women's SSS is not valid if it is not enforceable. This is ridiculous. Consider speed limits, the prohibition against theft etc. Just because there are activists breaking such rules doesn't mean that most

Unicorn with a sign incoming!

Just a reminder the GRA specifies all men who father children remain fathers, and mothers remain mothers, however they identify and whether or not they have a GRC.
And the SC in the Freddie McConnell case refused her attempts to remove the human rights of her child to know who their mother is, to suit her fantasies.

NC: full blown witch hunt

NC listing out a long list of things NHS Fife has done .

It's not a good list for the other side!

Go Naomi!

Wow. That was a stunning mini-speech by NC.

Onto Cornwall county council

'Morally repugnant' - go NC!

omg I just gave NC a standing ovation live in my living room!

From TT

people don't respect them and it is perfectly clear who needs to use which toilets.

Moving on - the Rs are saying that if schools have a responsibility to undertake the moral education of children then a good employer has the same responsibility. And NHS Fife has a responsibility to educate SP by requiring her to change her clothes in front of one of her male colleagues. The good employer should educate her out of this bigotry. NHS Fife has undertaken a witch hunt against a nurse of 30 years unblemished service.

from herald
11:40am
Ms Cunningham says: "The suggestion that is often made is that if you have clear rules about these facilities being for men or for women and no men should use women and no women should use men, then you can't enforce those rules without having somebody conduct genital inspections at the door.
"That is hysterical nonsense. It is perfectly possible to have clear and well understood rules about who uses which spaces without anything of the kind.
"The fact that people sometimes break and sometimes get away with it doesn't mean that it's wholly impractical. See, for example, speed limits... Those things aren't perfectly forced."
11:38am
Ms Cunningham now talking Croft v Royal Mail, a case where pre-operative transsexual employee, Sarah Croft, claimed gender reassignment discrimination when she was denied access to female toilets and asked to use a unisex facility.
The employment tribunal, Employment Appeal Tribunal, and the Court of Appeal all ruled against her claims.
The courts found that while Croft had not been dismissed and that Royal Mail had taken reasonable steps to prevent staff discrimination, the primary issue was when a trans employee could assert the right to use facilities of their affirmed gender rather than their birth sex.
Ms Cunningham says this is a "dead letter" in part because of April's Supreme Court ruling which said sex in the Equality Act was biological sex.
"It fails to grapple in deciding at what exactly the stage of transmission might be at which a trans identifying man should be allowed to use single sex facilities ."

From TT

It has attempted to smear her as a bigot and transphobe, to drive a wedge between her and her lesbian daughter, it has smeared her witnesses, it has told lies, it has attracted censure from the IC and the EHRC. This behaviour is repugnant.