NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #53

[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].

The hearing was 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: 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
Thread 52: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5403218-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-52 2 September 2025 to 4 September 2025

I was surprised that the search for very important emails required for a legal proceeding was left to KS, and was not carried out by the IT professionals in the organisation, who would know what the official policy on automatic deletion is, but also how definitive the deletion actually is.

I just looked it up out of interest. Scotland uses NHSMail from which any emails can be retrieved for up to 2 years if an authorised person requests a search for forensic purposes. So whatever went on still exists and can be extracted if requests are made quickly. Which I am sure they will be, from MG's side.

https://support.nhs.net/knowledge-base/data-retention-and-information-management-policy-office-365/

@NebulousSupportPostcard apologies for various reactions, I struggle to interpret emoticons/whatever they're called. Just wanted to say that info/link sounds useful etc.

And as a PP stated, why was KS doing the searching?

It's much easier and quicker for the IT professionals to do this, and they don't care about the content. They assess based on the request, e.g. is KS a recipient or sender? Is SP or DU mentioned? If yes, then provide it.

They won't look at it, saying, oh that looks a bit bad, let's not let them have that one.

As a consultant I received zero HR training.

If you have trainees you are expected to have Educational Supervisor training. Mine was a while ago but from memory it covered:
How to make sure your trainee completes their portfolio
How to give feedback in a constructive way that doesn't upset the trainee
What to do about a 'trainee in difficulty' - basically give them a lot more support

Everything about KS says Educational/Clinical Supervisor training and zero knowledge of HR.

Well yes @MyrtleLion but this is the same NHS Fife that chose the Sixth Best Way to retrieve Upton's phone data, so there is that too.

You're absolutely right. I keep forgetting they are bloody incompetent and assume they have a basic level of professionalism.

How wrong I am.

I am presuming it was all strategic incompetence. If it mattered enough to anyone on the corridor of power they would have requested a forensic search themselves to avoid any more surprises.

It's probably the ordinary variety of incompetence. If Fife NHS is anything like Fife Ed Service, they'll waste money on that which is currently fashionable, but grudge spending on that which is necessary.

Our emails get deleted from the deleted box after 30 days. Everything else is still there for all time. I have to physically go through and delete emails after 6 years to be compliant with my organisation's GDPR policy. I have other emails going back 15 years...
We also get an annual reminder that if a FoI or SAR is received, our IT colleagues can can do pull all correspondence with no notice - as well as us being asked to produce this too.

Was that merely incompetence? Maybe if it was the second, or even third less unfavourable option, but the sixth?

It seems such a bit of luck as to be a a life line, which the computer expert seems to think there was no other explanation for other than someone availed of to tamper with the data. Computer expert seemed to think the editing dates before the creation dates was well dodgy.

I feel that isn't em really fair on clinical staff when they are also managing people. A minimum should be procedures and reporting structure

I'm exercised about this as it could affect one of my DC who has had all the NHS diversity training but no HR. There are so many nurses Drs in departments all round the country where this could happen.

My DH was an IT Guy for a university in a previous part of his life, and part of his job was responding to things like this. He's heard this part of the evidence with snorts because it should be on a server even if you think it's safely gone. Phones are fun too. You can get all sorts of things back that they think are gone forever or were never recorded but only if you can get your hands on them! He too thinks deleted emails sometimes vanish after 30 days off the individuals machine. Most of all, you'd never, ever let someone do it themselves. Unless, of course, you were up to no good.

I’ve also had no HR training, despite being in a role where I’ve got some management responsibilities related to junior doctors in my department. I keep a load of up to date Trust policies on things like leave, sickness, equality etc handy and if there’s anything vaguely HR related that doesn’t have a simple answer from the policy I speak to HR.

Something that struck me about the whole “we had to suspend Sandie because we couldn’t rearrange the shifts to separate Sandie and Upton” issue was that IIRC, Sandie and Upton wouldn’t have been on shift together for another month after the changing room incident, so there would have been time to swap shifts around. You don’t need to tell everyone why there needs to be a swap, just work out which of the other junior doctors could swap with Upton and explain to them that there’s a staffing issue on the rota and could they swap these shifts. Most people are reasonable and would swap if it wasn’t massively inconvenient for them. It can be difficult to get cover at short notice but a month ahead should allow enough time.

I was listening to Michael Foran’s commentary on the IT evidence from the tribunal again (and it’s just as gobsmacking as the first time I heard it) and he was saying that Jane Russell’s reasoning in accusing Jim Borthwick of concocting a report suggesting Upton manipulated the phone evidence, seems to be that Upton can’t possibly be lying, so therefore JB must be lying by suggesting it. It reminds me of the immediate and total belief that Kate Searle seemed to have that Upton’s account was unquestionable and there couldn’t be another side to the story, and also of the way a colleague talks about a trans child in their family – the belief that the trans person is always good, always right, always truthful, and utterly unquestionable and the whole world must bend around them. Anyone who even slightly disagrees with the trans person is not just wrong, but is malevolent. It’s a very strange, unbalanced perspective.

You're totally right, and I've seen something like that in parents of children with autism. It's as if they say it often enough and loud enough then things will be fine. Which is not only untrue but actively dangerous because one of the first principles of applied behaviour analysis is that you have to prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. If you don't, then you, and I'm sorry because I can't put it nicely, end up with a little brat who thinks they have a divine right to their own way and hasn't learned to care about anyone else. Then they meet the real world and it gets messy. So did she have a crush on Dr U or is there some link that helped to get them the job? 50+ candidates and they had to pick that one strikes me as odd.

There used to be a particular type of straight woman who would be heavily into gay male culture - though only the sequins and drag and camp side, not the sweat and muscles and cock side - and typically she would have a gay male friend.

And the way she treated that gay male friend did not suggest that they had an peer relationship where she respected him as an equal; it suggested that he was her purse puppy.

I'm not saying that's all of what going on here, and there's something very weird about Upton acquiring this harem of compliant women rushing to affirm his every desire. But I can't help thinking that's part of it. The member of the sacred group is both put on a pedestal and infantilised, if that makes sense.

Yes, I’ve seen that dynamic between some women and these men before too.

Still behind and trying to catch up…

But on this point I recall that DU had already made a lot out of the notes being contemporaneous at the time of the CR incident. DU had to bolster his own credibility and used the notes to do this - so was already caught in the lie waaay before the legal action started. So was unable to change that claim…

The reason I think that the notes were so important was because DU told a different story about what happened in the CR with SP. SP said DU got undressed in front of her - which is not the action of someone who is afraid/intimidated and also a male undressing in front of a lone woman could be interpreted as sexual harassment.

So presumably DU had to change that part of the story in case it risked turning colleagues against him. Why otherwise risk changing details?

The notes were a key part of the bolstering of DU’s credibility over SP. GM mentioned this in the investigation - the notes were contemporaneous so more compelling and why would DU undress in front of SP? So this was key in them siding with DU on the he said she said evidence. That’s why DU couldnt later soften this part of his story…

Therefore with the evidence strongly showing tampering of the evidence combined with a vagueness about where DU described where he was standing during the incident really undermines his credibility as a witness to the CR events. On top of that, DU also softened his evidence on the professional conduct evidence having realised that false allegations would be serious for him. And also described SP in the CR as direct but calm - which points towards statement of her belief rather than harassment of DU…

[heads off to start of thread to keep reading]

If you read the literature on young (as in pubertal) gender confused boys, there is almost always a “cheerleader” girl who is somewhere on the periphery, “helping” with makeup and clothes shopping, and policing pronouns for the boy.

I'm not saying that's all of what going on here, and there's something very weird about Upton acquiring this harem of compliant women rushing to affirm his every desire. But I can't help thinking that's part of it. The member of the sacred group is both put on a pedestal and infantilised, if that makes sense.

This is a really good point about them being put on a pedestal and infantilised at the same time. I suppose if they're infantilised it positions them as needing protection and needing others to fight for them ("the most vulnerable" narrative).

There's a 1920s Soviet film called Storm over Asia which tells the (fictional) story of patriotic Mongolian herdsmen repelling a British imperialist invasion. The director Vsevolod Pudovkin had an amazing visual style that raises it above the level of crude propaganda.

There's a great sequence in the middle where the British are taken to an audience with the Grand Lama of Mongolia. You see the grandeur of the temple, the solemn dignity of the monks, they're ushered into the great audience chamber... and the Grand Lama turns out to be like a 2 year old boy.

This makes perfect sense if you believe in Tibetan Buddhism with its doctrine of reincarnated lamas, but if you don't it's incredibly funny to see all the courtiers fawning over the toddler.

The first trans identifying man I met (back in 1978) was actually quite a nice chap, very candid about his long standing distress, respectful of women and their spaces and the least likely looking female you could imagine. He was saving up for what was then called sex change surgery in Tangier, but he knew very well he wouldn’t actually change sex.
I got on reasonably well with him but he had a little coterie of quite tough, streetwise young women from work who acted as his minders, took him with them on nights out and gave him clothes and makeup tips. I found this fascinating. It was quite a tough area in a deprived town, the girls were from a large, extended semi-criminal family and they were so nice to him. As far as I remember, he didn’t get much hassle, in a place where homosexual men were beaten up on a regular basis.

This is an interesting dynamic. It puts me in mind of a time a man joined a mostly female participant but mixed sex group activity I was involved with. This man behaved differently to the other men and I noticed him overstepping many boundaries. He made me deeply uncomfortable and I would have to be blunt to the point of rudeness to maintain my boundaries.
What I noticed was it was the women who I would have seen as the most streetwise who welcomed him in and were seemingly the last to notice his creepy behaviour.

I would have assumed these women would have had a good radar and certainly better than mine, but for a time they were his gang.

Yes THIS. Needs its own thread for discussion. The behaviours of women in relation to males perceived as at risk from other males. It’s a peculiar combination of deferral to male status while treating them as vulnerable and in need of protection. Seems to include reduction of typical boundaries between male/female and the acceptance of behaviours that would not be tolerated if coming from women.