NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #52

[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 resumed 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 #50 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 51: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5402652-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-51 1 September 2025 to 2 September 2025

For those worried about SP's career prospects after the completion of the next hundred and six hearings. She has options.

I know JKR is only sixty, but after this is over and if she needed a personal nurse who was good in a crisis, she would, at least, be a great employer. And SP is only fifty.

On the other hand, SP could change her name to Theo Peggie, have her medical records expunged and start over as a male nurse.

Yep. Ella Fitzgerald's version is glam and sexy.

Bananarama and Fun Boy 3 have parts for so many of the main characters. Kate Searle, Esther Davidson and Isla Bumba for the 'girls'. And Upton, flanked by Head of Nursin,g Jamie Doyle, and Peter Donaldson, IT Guy, for the 'boys'.

Does anyone know why the date given in the Herald Report is 6th August? That suggests that the issue of the new proceedings is not a reaction to the goings-on yesterday and was begun earlier, but I wondered if they could have lodged it on that day to be ready if any hanky-panky ensued

Think about it like this.
A person makes a credible allegation of racist language. A proper investigation is conducted during which the privacy of all participants is protected, the investigating person is genuinely independent of the parties and has no connection to the incident in question. The evidence is weighed in a fair manner and the accused is found not guilty. There is no damage to their name or reputation in the workplace. For example, the investigator does not send out an email to a group of 20 senior people saying "the accused is a terrible racist and we need to support the object of their racism. And BTW do you have any similar examples so we can fit the accused up good and proper?"
An employee does not have a grievance if the allegation was credible and investigation properly conducted, and the person found not guilty and no collateral damage was done to their general reputation.

They are also presumably hamstrung by their star being hitched to Dr U's. They can't just offer Sandie whatever it will take to get her to settle because the good Dr isn't going to agree to any sort of settlement that opposes his 'I'm the centre of the universe and you have to do what I want or it will become the saddest of sad times' world view.

Yes, I keep on not including Upton in how much this has restricted the freedom of movement in litigation by NHS Fife.

My instinct is that new proceedings were ready to go once the hearing in the original case had finished and it was out of the hands of the legal teams. But yesterday's shenanigans caused a rethink of that plan.

I agree. Maya's career took a course she might not have predicted following her legal win, and Sandie's might too. I can see her on the board of the Darlington Nurses' Union or advising Sex Matters on how the NHS operates

I think in a way she's more accessible too, Maya worked for a think-tank, as I recall. That is out of some people's frame of reference, and maybe a nurse is something more people can identify with, despite the treatment being similar. So she might peak more people. Either way, diverse voices can only be a good thing.

Time for Wendy Cope again I think!

He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.

Anyway. I feel a meeting between Big Sond and @nauticant after all this is over (if it ever is!) would be very therapeutic for you both.

They will have put in further complaints following the July tribunal I guess, once they had cross-examined the most recent documents, and in the light of the many iterations of NHSFife Press Release Friday. In the same way, they put in a claim for harassment immediately after the February sitting, because Sandie had been called for a disciplinary hearing some time at the beginning or near the middle of the opening weeks.

Margaret Gribbons has been absolutely on fire with the timing of her press releases. She has ensured Sandie has made headlines steadily throughout the year, and presumably there will be more Bananarama-themed surprises to come.

And vice versa too. If I were DU, I'd have wanted the option of saying I followed my employer's advice and should've been able to trust that it was legally sound. That's not been open to him.

Alternate career paths for Sandie Peggie. I wonder if the Trump International needs a resident health care professional......never too late to learn to play golf and pass out paracetamol to hungover guests.
More seriously - private health care, I would guess if she's not interested in a campaigning type role.

I wish that statement from NC could be written on a t shirt, but it would have to be in such small letters no one could read it. What is needed is a billboard, or two, in a place where people can stand, read, and think “Blimey, it’s all so bloody obvious when you think about it isn’t it?”

Sorry to quote myself, but to add, my neighbour is a good example of this. She's an NHS worker. While we were hanging laundry out we were chatting over the fence, and I asked if she'd seen anything about Sandie. She had, and was outraged. Maya had completely passed her by. It wasn't something she'd ever really thought about, until it was suddenly in her arena, I suspect others will be like that.

Reminds me of JR’s dismissal of MF because she studied agriculture.

What is agriculture if not the application of our collective knowledge about sex?

Very true. And yet JR takes the word of medical professionals who don't know what sex they are.

I said on another thread that I had a day procedure in another Fife hospital.

My named nurse waited until there were no witnesses before asking me what on earth was going on in Fife schools re gender ideology.

Just flicking trough NC's final submission, it keeps yielding up new nuggets

458- But this is 2025, and a counter-factual belief system sometimes referred to as “gender identity theory” has taken a sudden and surprising hold on our educated elites and our institutions. That belief system holds(16) that biological sex is not a binary but a spectrum, or perhaps wholly illusory; and the result is that the most obvious and commonplace generalisations about the sexes are thrown into contention. Astonishingly, then, a necessary preliminary to considering the effect of the two PCPs relied on by C is to consider first whether biological sex is a real and a meaningful concept at all.

(16) So far as can be discerned; in truth it is difficult to pin down exactly what it holds; it may indeed hold — or have its intellectual roots in a contention — that the very concept of truth is suspect.

Fife and these people have already searched, found and published all of their communications in relation to SP in response to a disclosure order

I think it is pretty clear that they have not found and published all of their communications. It is possible that there are further communications that help them, but it seems more likely that the missing communications have been held back because they make things worse for them.

My personal view on the evidence we have seen is that KS is by far the most culpable of the three. They all conspired to delay SP's return, but:

• KS sent out an email to all ED consultants condemning SP and trying to persuade them all to back Upton, thereby both prejudging the investigation and destroying its confidentiality
• KS immediately and unreservedly backed Upton without any attempt to find out SP's version of events
• KS helped Upton draft his complaint - entirely inappropriate for someone who would clearly be a witness to any investigation
• KS inappropriately attempted to accompany Upton when he was interviewed for the investigation
• KS attempted to interfere with the evidence of LA, the only witness to the alleged missing patient incident
• KS misrepresented LA's evidence whilst under oath, implying that LA's statement supported Upton's version of events, but she didn't want to give evidence for fear of racist abuse from SP and/or her supporters. KS then burst into tears when she discovered that SP already knew LA was the witness in question, and therefore also knew that LA's evidence had flatly contradicted Upton

I have no idea how good she is as a doctor, but if I ever have the misfortune to be treated at that hospital I would not want to be treated by her - a doctor who insists she can be trusted because she is a doctor but who lies freely, and who cannot be trusted to maintain confidentiality.

KS must have felt very relieved when she wasn't added as a respondent to the original case. To be included in one focused on her and tailored precisely to cover what she did, that is a far bigger nightmare.

Is there any evidence of harassment? Or defamation outside the courtroom (I think things said in court are protected against slander claims, as are things said in parliament)?

KS misrepresented LA's evidence whilst under oath

Or was she just telling her truth?(16)

(16) So far as can be discerned; in truth it is difficult to pin down exactly what it holds; it may indeed hold — or have its intellectual roots in a contention — that the very concept of truth is suspect.

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as 'leaving a changing room when a transwoman walks in'? It's a microaggression innit?

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as liking or retweeting a JKRowling tweet?

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as avoiding all pronouns completely?

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as failure to 'just start getting changed' in the presence of a transwoman?

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as failure to put pronouns in your signature?

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as saying no at any point in any conversation with a transwoman? The word no is harassment.

Isn't transphobic harassment defined as following the law and adopting the SC ruling into organisational policy?

I've seen all of these examples used in the wild btw.

My question relates to the "friends'" harassment of SP.