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

Not a victim of him no. But as a victim of some of the worse things a man can do to a female when given a chance I don't want men like Dr Upton in my women only single sex spaces.

And if I want to get on a podium I bloody well will.

The ruling seems to say that the doctor had a right to use the female changing room until the employer received a complaint then they were obligated to tell the doctor he had to use a different changing room.But it doesn't seem to rule they were wrong to suspend her for complaining.Many other female nurses felt the same but didn't speak as they saw their colleague put through the mill for saying how she felt.
There were supposed to be guidelines published to advise employers but it didn't happen although all the schools that have unisex toilets now have to change to separate male and females.The legal teams are confused so what chance has anyone else got?
It's such a mess.I see that the fairer way would be to provide male, female and Trans people toilets and changing then all bases will be covered and hopefully nobody is left feeling uncomfortable....

@SionnachRuadh

Or it might be possible to unblock this by putting a rocket up the bum of the following people:

• Bridget Phillipson, Minister for Women and Equalities, currently sitting on the EHRC guidance
• Wes Streeting, Health Secretary, who surely has some influence over the approach health trusts take to this litigation
• Pat McFadden, Work and Pensions Secretary and boss of the HSE, who therefore owns the Workplace Regs and could issue clarification on what they mean

The biggest rocket please cos there's absolutely no reason for them to be dragging their feet on this for so long, it's very irritating because we all know that the SC judgement was extensively detailed and made it abundantly clear that men, no matter how much lipstick and spinny skirts they wear, need to stay the hell out of women's single sex spaces, otherwise that space becomes mixed sex. That should be all the clarification they need at this point.

Their Scottish equivalents too, I suppose, but since Scotgov is openly refusing to abide by the SCJ, the only likely outcome is that they concede with ill grace when Westminster forces them to.

Too true. But they're too busy dying on the hill that the men who pretend to the women need to be "affirmed" in women's prisons, no matter what. I feel like I'm living in a clown world sometimes, I really do.

Thank you so much Myrtle, it's lovely, and an excellent fit

In real life, I am usually very respectful of the judicial process, I even defended 'the other side's' barrister because she was just doing her job.

I tend to say po-faced things like 'well of course, I was not present throughout the entirety of the trial to hear all the evidence presented, so if the learned judge condemned this rat [see photo] to death for exceeding the permitted level of cuteness, I am not qualified to do anything but respect his decision'.

So it takes a lot for me to be so critical of a judgement.

The non binary women one?

Oh dear I've succumbed to the derailment myself.

Speech is something that can be controlled / limited.

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense." George Orwell, 1984.

Dr. Upton is a man.

She wasn't suspended for complaining, she was suspended for harassing DU,

the judge said that DU should have been removed temporarily after the complaint until a solution was found I believe. And that solution didn't necessarily need to be the removal of DU.

Here?
Employment Tribunal finds NB does not meet PC of GR | Mumsnet

57.....Although the claimant says they did this because they felt unsafe, we are unclear what the claimant means by this. There was no action by Ms Dunn which would have reasonably led the claimant to be concerned about their safety.

1992 H&S regs come under the remit of the HSE not the EHRC

Dr Upton is not a woman.

I couldn’t give a shit about Upton’s feelings either.

Speech is something that can be controlled / limited.

it is. It was an abstract point made in response to people who kept trying to say that you can't control someone's speech (as the equivalent of not being able to control someone else's feelings). Of course you can set limits on speech- bringing it back to the case we can refer, for example, to workplace harassment.

Have you read the judgement though? I am merely going off the comments about both by the judge.

Oh yes thanks. The brutal (in legal language).

Although the claimant says they did this because they felt unsafe, we are unclear what the claimant means by this. There was no action by Ms Dunn that would have reasonably led the claimant tone concerned about their own safety.

Q) is it a good thing we have a programme of rolling out defibrillators across schools, venues and workplaces so that we have a timely and best chance of surviving if we collapse?
Q) is it important that the place where you go when you feel ill is safe?
Q) and in a non-domestic situation that would often be a toilet?
Q) so is it important that you would be found as quickly as possible in the toilet if you collapsed?
Q) so if toilets were all enclosed in full ceiling to floor rooms that were resistant to the passage of sound, do you agree that would lead to delays finding someone who had collapsed?
Q) so if we get rid of all the single sex designs that have door gaps to make them inclusive of gender, that would mean everyone was more at risk at their most vulnerable?
Q) and those people with invisible disabilities with collapsible conditions would have no safe toilets to use, effectively discriminating them from the workplace?
Q) and would women and children who were led or pushed into a toilet cubicle be less likely to be rescued in time if there was no knowledge of what was going on in the toilet room?
Q) so would single sex toilets that were single sex and had door gaps also be a preventative measure for sexual assaults on women and children?

I give precisely as much of a shit about Dr Upton's feelings as he did about Sandie Peggie's feelings. That's fair, isn't it?

i don’t despise anyone for identifying as a man or a woman either.

But I do despise anyone who expects me to believe that their identity is my reality.

And I despise anyone who expects me to go along with the removal of my rights to single sex spaces, services and opportunities.

That was Employment Judge Benson, who seems to be a bit less accepting of 'that sort of thing' than Big Sond.

I read the thread. Your comment was chilling.

Sandie wasn't following Dr. Upton around the workplace shouting "man, man, male man, XY chromosomes!"

It was in the context of asking Dr. Upton to leave the female changing rooms.

Who was the EJ in Jo Phoenix's ET? That was pretty brutal on the OU staff involved.

ETA EJ Young. EJ JENNIFER Young. I can't help feeling that's significant. The judgment set out very clearly the psychological bullying that JP was put through by both the OU and the individuals concerned.

No because DU did nothing wrong .

I read the thread. Your comment was chilling

hilarious 😂.

But they reported on the Scottish news that The Fife Health board should have told the Doctor to change elsewhere because they received a complaint and sex is protected by law.Coupke that with the High court ruling that legally you are the sex you were born with it means that the Nurse was right to ask him to leave because he felt uncomfortable.Therefore that's not harassment so the employer was in the wrong.

But I do despise anyone who expects me to believe that their identity is my reality

no one's identity is your reality. It's not about you.

I haven’t read the judgement, no; I have read in quotation the sections that suggest the Judge didn’t like NC’s manner, and considered SP not credible. But my point is that we needn’t take those comments as a message that if only SP had been more virtuous or NC had simpered a bit more everything would have been different. Women, know your limits! Don’t displease the men by being assertive or imperfect, or else you’ll get what’s coming to you.