NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #55

[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 3 September to 1 October 2025
Thread 54: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5418690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-54 from 28 September 2025

The judgment is terrible and clueless, like the Leonardo one. I really hope it will be appealed.

He has made himself look like and indiot a decent and informed person in public by using activist inclusive and appropriate language.

How would one get a legal judgment on what the definition of men and women is in the 1992 regulations. It can't be via an employment tribunal so what kind of case could it be?

I wouldn’t blame Sandie at all if she stops here but I really hope it will be appealed.

No, Stern was right the first time.

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what's being said here.

Taken together, this and the Kelly case seem to be saying (whilst carefully not saying, in a rather non-brave&stunning way) that the SC ruling is to be disregarded and female humans cannot really expect nominally single-sex spaces to actually be single-sex. Furthermore, both recent judgements seem to be leaning heavily on the "only one (unreasonable cow) complained" which is going to encourage TRSOH-captured institutions to redouble their intimidatory tactics against any hint of "microagressive" "non-progressive" "wrongthinky" UnBelieving disobedient behaviour amongst the support bipeds.

In other words, all back to the pre-Forstater situation of Righteous Nirvana.

I suppose it was inevitable, with the fervency of pseudo-religious belief driving them, that The Righteous would fight back and hard.

IANAL so no idea, but it isn't sustainable. Society cannot have single-sex facilities in services but single-gender facilities at work.

💯

I think it’s because you are only talking about being half-decent. For the other 50%, it is being potentially abusive.

Being kind to men is being half kind. What about the other half? That’s what some find contemptible.

I think this is a valid point.

In the Darlington nurses' case I found myself in disagreement with a lot of posters who thought their QC was not being as effective as NC would have been if she'd been representing them.

I'm not convinced the NC approach is always the best...

Why does everyone take these men so seriously, and women not at all?

Wow just reading a few sections and quite upset and not carrying on.

1. Where they decided Dr. Upton to be the "credibly witness" for the exchange...and Sandie wasn't for basically anything she said. Essentially because he wrote his account down afterwards and ran off crying to his manager. Never mind DARVO, or his dubious testimony or him changing the evidence etc.

Nevermind Sandie's impeccable record versus Dr. Upton dubious one.

1. Again agreeing with Dr. Upton it was unreasonable for Sandie to have a polite discussion - again it is literally in the NHS harassment policy

1. As everyone has pointed out "the second respondent is not a person who is obviously male from external appearance" - WTF. Even after probable hormone treatment hairstyle and makeup still looked male. And would have looked far more male in scrubs and receding hairline two years before. I don't recall anyone in the hospital thinking Dr. Upton was a biological woman!

This has pissed me off massively today. I really really hope it goes to appeal. It just seems classic case of professional tribunal believing male doctor over female working class nurse. And I don't like Sandie. I do think she's a bit racist. But I also watched both and she was the credible witness.

Edit - sorry can't get numbering to work!

It implies that looking like a woman and having had reassignment surgery makes it ok.

SC says not.

It's a mystery, isn't it, when The Righteous would swear blind it's impossible to tell what sex anybody is! 🧐

I am so done with this nonsense.

The whole point of the SC judgement in FWS that the comparator for a male with a GRC was a male without a GRC. And by definition, DrU had no GRC, so is essentially and by definition just male.

What even is this shit about the wrong comparator? I am absolutely furious.

Well that's completely bonkers. It's headed straight for an appeal and will get it on multiple grounds.

Not least the entire redefining of the SCJ, and this insane idea that men (who have sufficiently transitioned, no means of identifying this btw), can use the women's facilities unless a woman puts her head on the chopping block by complaining formally and very very nicely, and explains her trauma history to her employers (and presumably they choose whether or not to agree she is sufficiently traumatised to be allowed not to undress with a man when the man has special circumstances).

Then she may be allowed a different shift, or a cupboard to change in.

Good grief this man does not like women, does he?

I think she needed to get this case put much more firmly on FWS lines after she had that decision in her favour, and get the red herring of expressing gender critical beliefs out of the way. The point was that she was explaining why he shouldn't be there, which the SC said he should not. You would need a really hot shot judge to cut through to the actual issues in this case

859.
The 1992 Regulations do not have a definition of men or women. FWS does not determine the meaning of words in the 1992 Regulations. As stated above its analysis of the meaning of words such as “woman” was specifically confined to the 2010 Act itself. The terms of that decision therefore contradict the claimant’s argument.
860.
There are arguments both for and against the claimant’s position that the same approach should be followed, and for and against the respondents’ position that a definition of women which is inclusive of those who are trans women is appropriate in order to construe the 1992 Regulations consistently with Article 8. In our In our view these arguments are not ones that we can competently address..[my emphasis]

This is an admission of uselessness!
The whole f*ing point is whether or not DrU should be allowed to use the women's CR, and they've just admitted that the 1992 Regs may or may not say that DrU should not be allowed to use the women's CR.

So they are admitting that they don't know which is right: In our In our view these arguments are not ones that we can competently address -
in other words, the 1992 Regs may mean that SP was quite right, and DrU should not have been in the women's changing room - or not - who knows? certainly not the tribunal, they admit that they don't even have the competency to address this basic question, let alone have the answer.

It seems to me that the law in the judgement is clearly wrong and contrary to FWS, so I really, really hope SP appeals. That doesn't depress me too much, honestly, although it's a massive pain that she has to keep on fighting.

What really sticks in my craw is the assessment of the reliability of witnesses. Borthwick less reliable than Upton?! Poor Upton obviously not telling the truth on several counts but it's all very understandable and we believe everything else he says because the poor soul was so very upset by it all?! FFS. And the bar for overturning findings of fact at appeal is so high it's virtually impossible.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I remember Akua Reindorf saying it would be a low bar to get FWS read over to workplace regulations. I'll wait to see how the big legal brains decide to tackle it.

I am also really upset about how DrU is taken to be more credible than Sandie Peggie. Of fucking course a man is seen as more credible by another man. Of course they are.

And because men are almost never on the end of abusive and controlling behaviour they don't understand what they are seeing even when it's right under their nose.

I wonder if these male judges are saying this because they don't want these men in their loos and women must accommodate.

Continuation thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5456749-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-56

All that on how bad and wrong SP is , and how wrong Maya is, and how wrong the SCJ is, and vast amounts on being sensitive to men's identities, but only a very brief mutter about Fife being a bit incompetent but whatever, it's a hard world and stuff.

And all their witnesses of court were fully reliable, and lovely and definitely didn't come over as absolutely bonkers to anyone with a lingering grip on sanity.