NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #56

[nauticant]

Judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6936ce28a6fc97b81e57436a/S_Peggie_v_Fife_Health_Board__Dr_Upton.pdf

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
Thread 55: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5447019-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-55

.Deliberate and consistent behaviours which demonstrate a non-acceptance of aspects relating to a protected or personal characteristic(s) e.g. failure to use requested gender pronouns for a transitioning individual.”

I should have thought that deliberately and consistently ignoring the protected characteristic of sex by changing in a women’s changing room when you are a male, is far worse in the hierarchy of harms than someone failing to use a gender reassigned person’s requested pronouns.

I never would suggest otherwise

Agree with all of this.^

Makes me feel a bit sick thinking about this judgement and what it means for women of the biological kind. I hate to think of how positively gleeful and smug Dr U and NHS Fife will feel tonight. It’s such a warning to women everywhere in captured institutions, do not complain or your life becomes hell.

Primarily it’s astounding that this one judge gets to make such a momentous decision. One who does seem to like women who stand up for themselves. Can any of the lawyers on this thread make sense of his legal reasoning?

It’s not my problem that people lack resilience that they can’t cope with reality based comments. He is male and the ET even said it.

And even if it is hurtful, I couldn’t give a shit about the feelings of Dr Upton, or any other such men.

Not to my point, it wasn't. That was my point.

Life can be tough and we are usually best served in the long run by accepting the truth.

Again:

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right."

@puppymaddness DU is as a matter of fact a man, how much he looks like a man is neither here nor there legally speaking and cannot be a lawful assessment of what facilities he uses.

you may personally find comments on what DU looks like as demeaning.

but that comes under the category of tooooooo bad, especially on this thread.

It will definitely rock the boat for employers, but it hasn’t provided clear guidance on how to navigate the issues unfortunately. If Dr U sued the nhs for discrimination, they would no doubt have had a case to answer too. It’s all very confusing.

I do think it’s unfortunate that certain other comments and jokes made by SP privately, and even by her husband on FB, were brought into the tribunal. Her mother’s alleged comment about “she’d make him a woman” even made an appearance. The respondents presumably raised them as they considered they went to bad character, namely racism and transphobia, to discredit SP. The tribunal agreed, but decided there was no relevance to the facts of the case.

The racist joke mentioned in the tribunal aside (apparently about the floods in Pakistan), SP referring to Dr U as “weirdo” and “it” was considered transphobic and could have affected her stated motivations and credibility significantly. In fact, in one section of the ruling (yes, it’s 300+ pages - I found pages 40-100 most interesting) the tribunal states they found Dr U to be a more credible witness generally than SP. One reason was because she claimed she used the word weirdo because that’s a name for someone acting weird, which the tribunal disbelieved.

Whether you agree or not with what is out there in this ruling, I think there are big lessons to be learnt here. Perceived transphobia is going to potentially discredit the originator and could come back to bite them. It’s possible that SP would have been more successful if she’d not said certain things, or been married to a man who did.

I don't think anyone here 'despises' men identifying as women. What we won't do is enable their delusions.
I'm happy for anyone to dress as they please.

This part of the judgement stood out to me as an example of the NHSF/DrU witness's evidence being accepted without question.

It is about DrU's meeting with Dr Pitt - five minutes after the exchange with SP.
At the time, it seemed like Dr Pitt believed everything DrU said, without the slightest hesitation. That version of events then became the version of events, and nobody asked SP for her side of the story until a lot later.

I notice that Dr Pitt and -as far as I remember- every single one of the other witnesses on DrU's side referred to him as a woman. They all seemed very defensive about 'Beth'.

They were entitled to do so of course, but I'm surprised that the judge didn't note their readiness to accept DrU's claims to be a woman, and that this might have influenced them towards accepting DrU's version of events at face value.

It certainly seems to have been the case with Dr Pitt, who never once considered that there was another side to the story.

Second respondent’s meeting with Dr Pitt
151. Immediately after the second respondent left the changing room, the second respondent went to find a consultant colleague Dr Elspeth Pitt. Dr Pitt was the consultant who had been working at the department, and whose shift ended at midnight after which she was to be on call.
152. It took about five minutes for the second respondent to locate her. The second respondent looked shaken, was visibly distressed and upset, and presented as startled to Dr Pitt. They went into the well-being room in the department. The second respondent reported the events in the changing room to her. When doing so the second respondent was very distressed, it appeared to Dr Pitt that the second respondent was fearful, and the second respondent was sobbing. The second respondent stated that the second respondent had had a very unpleasant and painful conversation with the claimant at the end of the second respondent’s shift; that the claimant had said that the second respondent should not be in the changing room; that the claimant had likened the situation to that involving a convicted rapist; that the second respondent had felt cornered; that it had escalated and the second respondent could not get away and that the second respondent felt very upset at what had been said by the claimant.
153. Dr Pitt listened to the second respondent and provided comfort. She gave advice to the second respondent including peer support from the British Medical Association, and to write a factual account of what had happened.
154. Their discussion lasted about thirty minutes. As the second respondent was fearful Dr Pitt suggested that the second respondent go home, and walked out to the second respondent’s car with the second respondent in case there was an encounter with the claimant. There was no such encounter, and after preparing an initial note of the discussion on the second respondent’s mobile telephone using an application called Google Notes, doing so for several minutes around 00.45am, the second respondent drove home.

Both you and the judge are wrong. I don't have standing to take it up with the judge, but I'm pretty sure that eventually, on appeal, his errors in law will become clear.

We are indifferent to his feelings on the matter. Many would say that’s worse; but about that, we don’t give a shit either.

Sure you can continue to make profoundly degrading and hurtful personal comments regarding the person and appearance/ body of an individual who has been cleared in court of any wrongdoing.

I will continue to point out how disgraceful that is.

Ok 🤷🏼‍♀️

I don’t despise them at all. But they are men. Saying men are men is not indicative of despising anyone.

And even if I am causing profound hurt - I don’t care.

'Disgraceful' how? Sex is a fact.
If we were all saying he was ugly and stupid I'd get your point but saying he is a man is not an insult.

Yes. I hear the full force of your hatred.

Probably an irrational number, like π or something.

Just to point out, the tribunal found SP’s reference to “shadow” to mean basically Dr U’s five o’clock shadow, and I’m paraphrasing but in essence said this discredited her.

It is much worse than an insult to DU.

Yes it is inevitable. What a waste of time and money.

Sandie Peggie knew he was male. So what the judge is saying is that even when Red Riding Hood knows the wolf is a wolf, she's not entitled to be worried about it if the wolf is dressed as a grandmother and good at imitating a grandmother's mannerisms.