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

Hoooo! I've just realised - won't another tribunal focused entirely on her require Dr Upton to give evidence again?

NC: In a previous Employment Tribunal you said you were female. Is your position still that you are female or have you revised your view on this?

Random question, but where does the ‘Big Sond’ nickname come from? I must have missed something along the way.

There isnt anything to be gained from pursuing so called "friends" . It wont gain Sandie anything and she may wish to remember good times and not go there. They will suffer anyone as no-one will want to be around backstabbers.

How can someone be harassed for being trans when they insist they are biologically female and insist on using single sex facilities particularly post SC ruling and then it's demonstrated that they are trans? That's straight up deception and sexual harassment of women through stealthing.

Given the number of comments I've seen on here, never mind BatShit TRA Twitter circles, it's quite the stretch.

Yes, she'd just look ridiculous. Much better only to go after people who were in authority. Her fellow nurses weren't abusing their positions.

It won't gain anything?

Except maybe make NHS staff consider their legal responsibilities and not just use Google or the wrong NHS department for legal advice.

I don't even mean related to trans issues here either.

Searle's conduct in isolating Peggie, punching down on nurses and assuming the worst of nurses whilst assuming that doctors are always correct and circulating biased emails to the whole department on a sensitive HR matter BEFORE even talking to Peggie have wide spread implications for bullying culture across the board in the NHS which we know to be pretty damn toxic already.

This has fuck all to do with trans at this level and everything to do with total incompetence and lack of proper accountability of power within the NHS on a more broad basis.

Perhaps a Tunnocks tea cake themed coracle

@RedToothBrush someone suggested legal action against former friends - they didnt mean the 3 witches, they meant Benidorm friends.

If you were one if the 3 medical staff named in the new suit, would you want your case coupled with Fife's or have your own legal team? the problem of conflict of interest could well loom large if their actions were the result of pressure from above

The two consultant doctors might be able to think about the maybe £100,000 it might cost to appoint and pay for their own legal teams but I doubt Esther Davidson would.

I'd prefer my own legal team. Whether or not I could fund it would be a different question!

Maybe best for me not to always rely on my instinct:

Solicitor Margaret Gribbon said: 'I can confirm that on August 6, 2025, my client Sandie Peggie raised further legal proceedings in the employment tribunal against Fife health board (FHB), Dr Kate Searle, Dr Maggie Currer and Esther Davidson.'

All four respondents' legal defences to the claim are expected to be received within the next fortnight.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15061987/Nurse-suspended-complaining-sharing-changing-room-trans-doctor-issues-new-legal-proceedings-against-health-board-senior-staff.html

Ooh. So they haven't run out of likely targets yet. The only way Fife can stop this nightmare is to grovel and clean out the stables, as you said earlier. If they won't do it, the Minister will have to make them, so the real target could be Swinney and his chums

They are probably safer together. Fife has shown itself to be a vindictive enemy, and employer referrals to professional bodies tend to be taken more seriously than referrals from the public. As long as none of the three have done an Upton, and have concealed more than is already known, then it may serve all their interests to stick together with the employer, and style it out as a collective error of judgement rather than the grave professional misconduct that it really is. If there is a raft of changes at senior administrative levels then the errant doctors could find themselves carried by the new leadership, for the sake of keeping staffing levels consistent and moving on. I'd say Esther is maybe at risk of being offered voluntary severance, from the way her name crops up so frequently in JR's examinations. But she may not have as many options as the others to fight on her own.

I'm looking forward to the reveal on who authorised the Friday Press Releases. It would be great to see the Chief Exec's name on some tribunal papers.

She really should have followed up with her “peanut free” analogy.

I don't think I would like to cross NC either. Her ever-growing list of potential respondents could explain Fife getting so agitated this week when they finally realised that JR's arguments meant they were going down in flames. Id love to have been a fly on the wall when they had the discussion with the lawyers Monday night

There is also the evidence of Lottie Miles who after investigation decided that SP's suspension should be lifted but Kate Searle & Esther Davidson pushed back & didn't want her to return to work.

The judge's name is Alexander or Sandy usually for short. I believe the Fife accent renders it as Sondy - hence Big Sond

The judges first name is Alexander, Sandy is a common shortening of Alexander in Scotland so both judge and Complaint are Sandie.
They were referred to as Big Sandie and Wee Sandie or big Sond and Wee Sond in the local dialect by poster who provided a 'Fifer' commentary on the second part of trial (sorry having a total blank on the name of the poster who supplied the very funny and informative Fifer view point).

I may be wrong but I think that it was introduced by BezMills

Sandy is pronounced as "Sond" in Fife so you get Sond Kemp the judge and Sondie Peggie the claimant. Using Scottish naming convention, these become 'Big Sond' and 'Wee Sondie'

But I'm happy to be corrected.

Sorry that I am so slow that you got your answer while I was still typing.

Ir was indeed Bez, and sterling work it was too!

Bez is brill. 😁

thewaythatyoudoit · Today 17:54
Id love to have been a fly on the wall when they had the discussion with the lawyers Monday night

I wasn't at all convinced that the decision was taken on Monday evening. I imagined that the option had been simmering over the summer in light of the SC outcome, the terrible July hearing, the Friday Press Release, the third ET claim from SP, the Info Commissioner and EHRC concerns, and all the adverse publicity that entailed. And it seemed to me that JR needed to make her submissions the way she did to satisfy Upton, and then deliberately dropped the application at the last moment on behalf of R1, knowing that it was high risk, but that she at least had heard the claimant's case in full and would inevitably buy at least a little more time while the Judge considered the application.

I'm guessing Upton will have met with various others over the summer and would have known it was very likely to turn this way, though he will almost certainly be having 24/7 panic attacks for some time to come.