NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #54

[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
Thread 53: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404208-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-53 from 3 September

Good to see sanity prevailing, albeit belatedly.

Who finally intercepted the communal brain cell at Fife?

direct link to pdf of eqia if needed: www.nhsfife.org/media/cc4jaomy/stage-1-eqia-changing-room-facilities-across-fifefinal.pdf

Maybe they were just waiting for @Nauticant to go on holiday before releasing it. [has this room been unlocked by the caretaker yet, I mean, are we officially allowed in yet?]

I wonder if this is a sign that NHS Fife won't appeal (maybe DU will though?)

Little bit of Bananarama perfection via Maya Forstater on Twitter:
x.com/satiricole/status/1973370876801503600

I wonder if this is a sign that NHS Fife won't appeal (maybe DU will though?)

I saw this as a sign that NHS Fife had thrown in the towel. Otherwise, why not wait until the Judge hands down his opinion?

I also note that they aren't offering to do cheek swabs like elite athletes now need to prove that they are female. Surely those staff members who weren't sure of their sex would really like to know?

Old thread full, so this one is

Officially Open!

They couldn't really justify waiting until the end of a tribunal that was extended twice due to their own failings? The timing was probably as good as it gets because it was published late last night before the Leonardo UK toilet tribunal began properly for the public today. And now they can get on with the all-important job of deciding who gets sacked, and how boards and committees can be rearranged, with the fewest possible gigantic salaries at risk.

As of now, they maintain their Bananarama defence, and Sandie Peggie is still off sick with a guided reflective discussion hanging over her head, which I believe is in breach of NMC guidelines for employers of its registrants.

They had to wrestle one off a ginger cat.

In the Herald too.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25509567.sandie-peggie-nhs-board-tells-staff-use-toilets-line-sex/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawNKQZtleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBHQ2x1aVNFVHA0RWNEbVNHAR4glQ73weix1Av25WjSq7TxFDfVOuPIMTRblFwMHVUK0vWz7RNayDqxZj7wlg_aem_TIJ9Cf6ZTtWGfQ3a9wiyqA#Echobox=1759325948

Well they would appear to have blown their defence out the water! Unless they’re still claiming DrU is a biological woman?

The EQIA includes management of harassment risk for (LGB) T+ under sexual orientation pc but doesn’t have harassment risk management of T+ under gender reassignment. Plus no mention of harassment under other pcs!

A good starting point, I think NHSF have finally got the memo. I do wonder if they will try and settle the other cases.

They are calling it an interim EQIA and filled in the box for review and then a full EQIA process. I bet there will be a Definitely Not The Benidorm Chat group set up on the darknet by the new recruits to drive through change without the risk of Maggie Currer ramming her foot into her mouth again, and taking up a resus bed while the entire A&E team work to extract it

It was a lot better than 95% of EIAs I've seen, but there were definitely still a few holes.

I'd LOVE to see the City of London's EIA for the Hampstead swimming ponds.

I do wonder if the work they did on this EQIA impacted the last minute attempt in court to add ‘objectionable manifestation’ to the defence case, knowing they’d done the EQIA & couldn’t get past the lawful position that supported SP’s case. References in the sexual orientation section to dignity at work & anti bullying/harassment policies seems to feed into their bananarama defence i.e. SP was correct to her position DU shouldn’t have been in the changing room, but ‘manifested’ her position ‘objectionably’. Which they’ll no doubt still weave into the breach of the dignity at work & anti bullying policies.

Interesting that IB isn’t named on the EQIA. Not trusted? Not Qualified? Quietly shuffled on elsewhere? Or have the grown ups finally woken up to the reality of the hole they’ve dug themselves, & started to do their jobs properly? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Interesting that IB isn’t named on the EQIA. Not trusted? Not Qualified? Quietly shuffled on elsewhere? Or have the grown ups finally woken up to the reality of the hole they’ve dug themselves, & started to do their jobs properly?

I mean, you'd hope that at some point during the ET someone at Fife - whether legal or HR or exec - would have gone 'hang on a minute that's not right' and gone back to think about what was legal and followed regulations.

Interesting turn about face. I do think that explains the shift in JR ‘s new main line of defence.

hopefully JR might come to realise that defending trans ideology is not the career enhancing money spinner she thought it might be. And representing the shifty fuckers called handmaidens and TRA’s might be a dead end job.

I hope so.

I also hope other human rights lawyers all wander away like the heard of pea brained geese they are.

Here are the reasons why our Bumba-esque reckons overrule the judgment of the Supreme Court.

I don’t understand how JR can try to run a Bananarama defence now when Fife have already cleared Sandie of misconduct. One of the misconduct charges was over the CR incident on Christmas Eve iirc.
Do any legal people know?

And, of course, St Naomi of Cunningham elicited from Dr Upton that no matter how she had delivered her message, he would still have been offended. So I really can't see how it helps.

GPWM!

The complaint by Sandie is that they conducted (a protracted) investigation at all, and that the investigation in of itself was a form of harassment for asserting her gender critical views. The outcome is not part of her complaint.

So the respondent in defence is saying they were entitled to conduct an investigation, because they suspected that she was not motivated by her GC views , but rather because she was just a bigot.

the investigations conclusion was insufficient evidence of a misconduct.

neither side are arguing about the outcome of said investigation.

Just arguing about that it should or should not have happened at all.

@Conxis having said that i also forget that Sandie is also suing Dr Uppity.

The outcome of the investigation is somewhat different for him. He has in my opinion been shown to be a liar about what actually happened in the changing room, based on the evidence he gave.

Not to mention his alleged fiddling with his phone.

as the investigation did not uphold his complaints i struggle to see how the tribunal could not find against him, even though that outcome has not been mentioned in the submissions.

It just seems to me that whilst JR and NHS Fife has not formally ditched him,

they have in reality.