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 didn't mean to start tunnocks wars!
But we seem to be fond of the brand on here, and buying a copy won't do the (family run) company any good.
If they went out of business, we could be living in a world without Tunnocks... 😱

For those who don’t know, Tunnocks hold a special place on this board because of this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10120565/amp/Now-teacakes-cancelled-Tunnocks-stumbles-culture-war-LGB-Alliance-gifs.html

And it turns out lots of mumsnetters actually like their produce….

Lidl just rips off other companies’ products, paying no IP, and can therefore sell at a lower price. Don’t know where they stand on GC/GI but as they are HQ in Germany where self ID is the law we can probably guess.

If they went out of business, we could be living in a world without Tunnocks.

Genuine sad times.

I've yet to see cocoa successfully grown to scale in the UK, so I imagine the chocolate is not local.

Unlike the famous chocolate lakes of Germany, of course!

What is this of which you speak?? Where's my swimsuit? 😋

Living as we do in deepest rural Wales, it's nearly a 30 mile round trip to the nearest big supermarket. We therefore get our groceries delivered by Tesco. I've just checked and the branch from which our delivery comes stocks the milk chocolate teacakes and caramel bars, but unfortunately not the dark chocolate versions, though these exist. Sadly I really don't like milk chocolate, so will have to continue Tunnocksless...

I think the only practical solution to living in a Tunnocks desert would be to open your own store and to buy in bulk!

Thanks to the publicity I now discover that I have yet to sample their Caramel Log.

Amazon is your friend.

Tunnock's Dark Chocolate Teacakes (6 per pack - 144g) - Pack of 2 https://amzn.eu/d/7NUZ33Z

I went back to Michael Foran's blog on the 25 July when the IT experts were questioned. It was JR who introduced the implication that DU was lying. No-one else said so.

I wonder if by introducing that line of questioning she is trying to separate her clients. That DU lied, Fife can't be expected to know he lied and that is not their fault.

Or she's just shit at her job.

I may have just updated my Amazon order to add some plain chocolate Tunnocks. It seems the minimum order is two packs.

Sad times.

I got the impression that, by introducing the notion of lying, she was trying to nudge the expert witness into saying that he had in fact concluded that Upton was lying. If the witness had said that he would have been exceeding his role -- it would have compromised the neutrality of his application of expertise & undermined him as a witness.

That hypothesis is based on a very careful application of my total ignorance of court proceedings.

Earliest written source found by the OED is 1976. Etymology unknown.

I think JR was maybe trying to spring a trap that she could see NC was laying. By making the witnesses say on the record they didn't think DU was pants on fire, she removed the ability of NC to later suggest that's what they thought?

It's worth reading the article linked. HR departments get a bad name, but in NHS Fife's case, it seems like the few sensible members of management were in the HR dept. One of whom asked why they were keeping a nurse suspended at home when they were short of staff. Another, or possible they same one, pointing out that a suspension should be a last resort, not the first.

Contrast that with Isla Bumba and her googling antics on a £50K salary. Or the Consultant Kate Searle and her completely unwarranted email to the rest of the Consultants.

V interesting that it was so late. I understand that AI images use a ridiculous amount of energy/ water to be generated so am not suggesting one now from the experts. I think we can all imagine Japanese tea ceremony with Tunnocks. Beetle, hold back!

There was a radio 1 DJ who had a minor hit with a spoken word record, I think. It was on that where i first heard 'wassock'. Iirc I was a primary school. So 70s or early 80s.

Tell a lie. It was Tony Capstick

Was he a DJ?

I believe that the full epithet is "spawny eyed, parrot faced wazzock". But I could be wrong.

If it wasn't before then it will be in my household now. Thanks.

Has anyone else seen this in the Guardian? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/sep/18/uk-doctors-guilty-of-sexual-misconduct-are-not-being-struck-off-research-finds

I think Dr Upton's probably not worrying too much given that they don't strike people off because a rape is a one-off event. Looks like NHS Fife's culture of \circle the wagons! Protect the Doctor! Damn everyone else!'

Ouch. That’s dismaying. I cannot help hazarding a guess about the sex of the majority of the guilty.

It’s one vulnerability of the system that doctors are unsupervised much of the time, and another that they are so expensive to train - it’s a huge investment and you just don’t want to lose it.

I guess the solution is not to train people who are not robustly mentally healthy and sturdily apolitical in the first place. The profession certainly empowers more dangerous characters than you would hope.

That's shocking 😲

Agree these findings are dreadful from the outside almost incomprehensible. The GMC can and does appeal findings it thinks are too lenient. The MPTS rulings seem very inconsistent but dishonesty and reducing public trust in the profession are regarded as serious issues.
The MPTS hearing details are viewable on their website.

I subscribe and I have 5 free guest memberships to give away. PM me if you would like one - I think I will need your email address but have never done this before so wouldn’t swear to it.