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

Is it Schroedinger or Pete the Plumber, our manly man? If so, why did she get on her high horse when Naomi mentioned him?

😂😂

Not discrediting NC in any way, but sometimes it must be the material you have to work with!

(Re above posts)

NHS ‘must comply with law’ on gender, ministers were warned

https://www.thetimes.com/article/68361d20-fb33-4c0a-bb5f-2c66d43d5bbf?shareToken=fe01412e7f7ef3cdd2f13eb042708124

“Asked whether Falkner’s comments had been passed on, a spokeswoman for NHS Fife said that it would be inappropriate to comment on a live legal case.”

They've clearly got very short memories about that Friday afternoon statement they put out!

Maybe it's once bitten, twice shy for FIFE with their disastrous press release or maybe they've sacked the work experience lad who put it out.

It? Them!

How many iterations of the statement did we get to in the end?

That was so funny.

I’m sure the statement would prefer they/them!

Croft was a 1st tier tribunal and as such does not create president so is irrelevant even if it hadn't been superceded by the GRA, Equality act and the Supreme Court ruling

This case has definitely affected public perception in Fife.

There's an ongoing rape case here - a nurse practitioner has said that she was raped at her place of work, a local practice. It appears that the accused was also employed at the practice.

There's more about this in the public domain than would normally be the case - the nurse is no longer being paid by the practice after being unable to return to work and has turned to social media.

There's no suggestion that the accused is trans. However, one of the comments on a local social media page pointed out the stupidity of allowing any type of man access to female spaces. (Again, there's no word that the rape happened in a changing room.) There's also anger at the lack of support for female workers in the NHS. (Although the practice is a private concern, albeit providing NHS care.)

Croft went to the Court of Appeal, so it does create a precedent. The court ruled that at some point a male person could be considered transitioned enough to gain access to female facilities even if they had not changed sex but declined to say what that point was. The lower courts (the first tier tribunal and the EAT) had tried to draw a line at surgery, but the Court of Appeal did not uphold that. Crucially for this case, the court ruled that "acquiring the status of a transsexual does not carry with it the right to choose which toilets to use".

As you say, it happened before the GRA, the Equality Act and the Supreme Court, which calls into question some of the court's ruling, but the bit I have quoted is definitely still valid.

Also that. So JR's case is built on foundations that are not merely irrelevant, but quintuply irrelevant.

[Edit: now.seen the follow up, so perhaps only quadruply irrelevant and contrary to the desired argument.]

I've ground to a halt on reading the full submission. The middle section appears to be a Clintonesque bog of "It depends what the meaning of 'is' is", in which conversations are not discussions, assuming someone will do a thing is not expecting them to do it, and the Humpty Dumptiness drove me to distraction.

I still find it bizarre that so many hours have been spent on legal cases without there being a thorough analysis about what is actually going in UK public toilets to demonstrate the impact of the decision. Why is it necessary to have single sex public toilets? ‘We don’t have them at home’ is a familiar argument.

No one collates data. Not the RSPoA, not the police, not the HSE, not the DfE nor other government departments. The police don’t record locations in that detail, neither do hospital incident records.

My uk research over the last few years shows that unisex toilets are the worst for deaths and assaults, followed by single sex toilets that have a private design. All voyeurs and rapists were men. Victims were women and children of both sexes. The victims (as young as 4) were in supermarket toilets, train carriages, stations, schools, hospitals, pubs, clubs etc etc. All mixed sex toilet designs must be enclosed and private and sound resistant to comply with both legislation and building regs, but also be able to unlocked from the outside easily for medical emergencies. This latter vital safety feature has been abused by men. If the area in front of the cubicle is mixed sex, then single sex toilets become completely private. If it is ambiguous what ‘single sex’ means, the toilets become completely private.

Apart from men who want to use the ladies, everyone else (including the EHRC consultation) suggests adding more private, enclosed unisex toilets is the way to go to ‘quick fix’ the problem of a few people not wanting to go into the toilet of their sex.

100% agree, particularly as the only real argument now is whether public toilet provision should be single sex or mixed sex, not whether a single sex toilet can include both sexes (because it obviously can't).

The last mixed sex loo I was in, it was quiet and there was a man using the cubicle with the door open. By accident or on purpose? Who knows. Women don't leave doors open.

But that experience is just the top of the iceberg compared to what you've spelled out.

Do men leave the doors open when they use the cubicles in the men's SS toilets? My husband says "never in my experience".

I was thinking the same thing when I read that!!! Uhm, NHS Fife you put out a bloody shockingly stupid statement DURING the tribunal! Incompetent weasels.

My DH and my dad have confirmed yes, men do do this, but it's only to do a pee. DH doesn't do it but my dad does. Maybe a generation thing?

I actually once saw my dad do this when he accidentally used the ladies at the airport and THANK GOD nobody else was there and it was me that walked in on him. I gave him a right telling off. He'd missed the sign on the door.

Personally, I don't. However, some men do if they are having a pee. A man in a mixed sex loo leaving the door open may be doing exactly the same as he would in the gents without thinking about it.

Agree with prh47bridge.

In my experience some men do pee while leaving the door of the cubicle open. Some men unzip as they are walking into the cubicle & never bother to shut the door. Only peeing though never number twos.😀

I have lots of examples e.g. the Home Office

metro.co.uk/2018/08/16/women-fed-mens-bathroom-habits-home-office-gender-neutral-toilets-7846233/amp/

Thanks for the information. Some men do. OK.... Back when, that would have been "indecent exposure" and a public decency offence if they did it in a place where there were women and children as well as men, but I suppose that offence no longer exists.

(This would be good news for the chap who used to walk naked from Lands End to John o'Groats and the like and get arrested all the time, but I am unsure how many other people actually wanted that law to be discontinued. Except in his case it doesn't seem to have been, which I feel is very unfair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Gough )