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

Jeez.

Bloody typical of them to have not done an equality impact assessment and no surprise at all.

Can anyone fill in the context please, do the EHRC routinely get involved with employment tribunals? How did they get involved with this? It’s interesting.

I have read literally dozens of NHS equality impact assessments in the last few months. I have not seen even one that has been carried out properly. Most are a lazy tick box exercise but some of them openly seem to use them to promote a hierarchy of protected characteristics with trans at the top.

Do the likes of Isla Bumba and other DEI think that the E of DEI just means 'extra privileges for trans people' rather than Equality?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is an independent body that works to protect and promote equality and human rights in Britain. It enforces laws including the Equality Act 2010 that safeguard everyone's right to fairness, dignity, and respect, and aims to make the country a fairer place. All public sector bodies have a specific duty to carry out equality impact assessments of various policies to ensure they comply with the public sector equality duty. It will have come to the notice of the EHRC through the reports on the tribunal that NHS Fife is not complying with the law. More info on the link

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/about-us

Archive version: https://archive.ph/UvRjI

The 30 September impact assessment is going to be interesting. Will they finally be forced to tell DU to stay out of the female changing room. He won’t like that.

They should always have been telling him that. It's not actually an EA2010 matter, it's a 1992 HSE Regulations one, or at least that's my understanding.

An important but largely ignored fact is that all public bodies have to consider a duty to foster good relationships with separate protected characteristics, fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain that any. Conflict between separate rights must be considered and mitigated in an assessment of any policy change or proposal.

In my experience they just tick "no conflict" and carry blithely on prioritising their trans employees.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/equality-regulator-directs-nhs-fife-take-action-ensure-compliance-public-sector?return-url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.equalityhumanrights.com%2Fsearch%3Fkeys%3DNHS%2BFife&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Orlo

"NHS Fife has now confirmed that they have commissioned an equality impact assessment and anticipate that it will be published by 30 September."

Surely Isla Bumba could get the job done before the tribunal resumes? 😂

I'm listening to an old Radio 4 drama series and in it, the brilliant Nicola Walker's character has just said "What is it with you stupid people? Everything you're too stupid to understand, you say it must be a lie." I know how she feels.

Awesome headline:

"Sandie Peggie: NHS Fife tells watchdog it broke law" 😎

I love anything on Radio 4 that has Nicola Walker in it. It's typically a mark of quality like seeing Katie Hims. (Note that Hims is an actual name and not pronoun shenanigans.)

nauticant
It's typically a mark of quality like seeing Katie Hims.

Except when it's an Archers script, because she doesn't apparently know very much about the programme or the characters or the geography of the village. This is a pity, because she doesn't do herself justice.

They should have asked me. I could have popped round tomorrow to get it done for them. Agree, Isla Bumba should be able to do this - feels odd that they've gone external with it.

"NHS Fife has now confirmed that they have commissioned an equality impact assessment and anticipate that it will be published by 30 September."

Commissioned who?

Depending on which organisation /people are writing that report they’ll either double down or they’ll use it as a get out clause ie ‘oh we didn’t realise but it was an honest mistake supporting our (who we see as) vulnerable staff’.

If you haven’t yet read JKR’s review of Nicola Sturgeon’s book, treat yourself: https://www.jkrowling.com/in-my-own-words/

Thank you, Britinme!

Wow! JKR doesn't hold back, does she? That said, I don't find it unfair and she has some wonderful lines. 😁

I can see the attraction.

They've probably worked out by now what said assessment will actually say. Going outside Fife for it puts a bit more distance between them and the inevitable requirement not to let males self ID into women's facilities.

It'll be more expensive than getting an existing staff member to do it, assuming any of them have the guts, but then Fife haven't shown themselves to be particularly budget conscious on this matter.

I'm guessing that higher ups thought that IB's 'I just copied and pasted bits from everyone else's policies' approach was not going to work for an impact assessment

Ooh really? I may need to dm you

Surely, it would have been, anyone but Isla! And why the hell are we employing this person.