Sandie Peggie: Employment Tribunal, associated legal claims, and related matters - thread #66

[nauticant]

TLDR version: Sandie Peggie vs Royal College of Nursing is currently being heard. The hearing started on Wednesday 23 September 2026 and is scheduled to end on Thursday 1 October 2026.

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims were of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claimed 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 after a prolonged process judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025. That judgment is being appealed and an appeal hearing is expected to take place in 2027.

Additional legal claims have been raised. Sandie Peggie is taking action against the Royal College of Nursing, against three senior managers who were witnesses in the employment tribunal - Dr Kate Searle, Dr Maggie Currer and Esther Davidson, against Carol Potter, the chief executive of NHS Fife, for victimisation, against NHS Fife for discrimination, and against its director of people and culture David Miller for harassment. In addition, Sandie Peggie is being investigated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council over fitness to practice.
The past proceedings were live tweeted by www.x.com/tribunaltweets. Tribunal Tweets are likely to be providing coverage in current and future proceedings.

There's additional information on Tribunal Tweets' substack: www.tribunaltweets.substack.com/.

Links to previous threads #1 to #60 can be found in this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 61: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5472628-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-61 8 January 2026 to 3 August 2026

Thread 62: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5562302-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-following-employment-tribunal-judgment-thread-62 3 August 2026 to 24 September 2026

Thread 63: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5581909-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-63 24 September 2026 to 27 September 2026

Thread 64: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5583133-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-64 27 September 2026 to 29 September 2026

Thread 65: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5583663-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-65 29 September 2026 to 30 September 2026

You can't beat the powers of AI gerbils.

Maud is currently living in my back bedroom eating vast quantities of battenberg cake.

How? I think you just say no.

AI gerbils are ALWAYS what you need whether or not you know it.
(see also capybaras, camels, guinea pigs, quokkas, dragons, cats and dogs)

This is all so worrying. No research, no understanding of impact, certainly no consideration of impacts on the most vulnerable (women, the ill). So enthusiastic about being inclusive of men… god forbid they should feel hurt by being told they can’t go into women’s toilets. Indicative of what others have said.

No thought whatsoever on the impact on women in letting men into sss but lots of concerns about how those men will feel now they’re being told they must leave those sss’s.

PM: Not confident to say - there's no RCN edict, some ppl do pronouns and some don't, and we have staff who are trans.

Whose feelings are far more important than women’s feelings. Why? Because they’re men.

Re: pronouns, our university sends out numerous messages about adding pronouns to our emails or sending around pronoun badges for the (largely female) administrative staff to wear. I’m sure the vast majority who dutifully add pronouns or wear the badge are doing so only because it’s an institutional message. Not because they’ve thought about the implications and agree with them. Stealth normalisation of an agenda.

I think the Judge needs a moment of recognition for suggesting that submissions be oral -

I think we should hear submissions as we have many observers.

That shows a commitment to open justice that we've previously seen as tepid, in some courtrooms.

Yes, I was quite impressed by that, too.

They live in hope!

Other than being made to wait if you log out and then want back in I think this time they've been really on top of the whole lots of people watching online.

thanks, that was it!

But also that attitude is appalling - no care for how an ever extending suspension with no info or pushback would impact SP.

I’m not quite sure what your expectations are re evidence? Witness testimony is evidence?

If these are the three claims lets take em one by one:

• Gender-critical belief discrimination: Claiming the RCN failed to support her or take her concerns seriously because union representatives disagreed with her gender-critical and sex-realist views. 1, 2, 3]
• Failure to advise in early 2024: Claiming the union failed to inform her or advise her in January 2024 (following her initial suspension from NHS Fife) that she had grounds and a potential legal claim against her employer. 1, 2]
• Refusal of formal legal assistance in 2025: Claiming the RCN wrongfully refused her formal request for legal support and representation in January 2025 while the Fife Health Board was handling her ongoing disciplinary investigation. 1, 2]

Gender-critical belief discrimination: Claiming the RCN failed to support her or take her concerns seriously because union representatives disagreed with her gender-critical and sex-realist views. 1, 2, 3]

is there evidence that a) they didn’t support her or take her concerns seriously?

I would say ABSOLUTELY.

SF made it clear that he took the NHS suspension entirely on a presumption that SP had been discriminatory in bringing up Isla Bryson. He never once testified to having any thoughts re her concerns to her meeting a man in SSS. He only presumed it was ok for DU to be im there because NHS board said so. Never the usual union role - to just accept NHS PoV.

once that starting position was set that never changed as fas as I can see.

the assumption in itself is evidence that they disagreed with her views because they never questioned his right to be there but assumed she was discriminating against him. There is lots more evidence that they disagreed without ever having to publicly state that. Everything they did and said with regard to TRA action demonstrated that.

Failure to advise in early 2024: Claiming the union failed to inform her or advise her in January 2024 (following her initial suspension from NHS Fife) that she had grounds and a potential legal claim against her employer. 1, 2]

because of the discrimination outlined above they did not inform or advise her that she could claim discrimination re her suspension even though as we saw in that ET the process was entirely wrong and biased against her. The RCN could only have ignored that on the basis that they believed in GII and that this therefore merited the lack of process (more feasibly, they never questioned the awful failure of process because they had washed their hands of GC and SP and were only performing bare minimum for process reasons)

Refusal of formal legal assistance in 2025: Claiming the RCN wrongfully refused her formal request for legal support and representation in January 2025 while the Fife Health Board was handling her ongoing disciplinary investigation. 1, 2]

I think it is quite clear they did not give any consideration to the idea they would do this unless they could get SP to agree to a process that would delay things (perhaps hoping that the SC case would fail). Ie they made an impossible condition a condition.

that in itself proved it was possible to offer RCN LA even though SP had outside LA. If they were willing to consider it if that condition was met they]n they were willing to make an exception.

That not withstanding they could have made this case an exception, at the very least the idea of an exception should have been more thoroughly considered given the high profile nature of the case. Instead it was a knee jerk no. The obvious inference is because they disagreed with her GC views.

.

Would it be terrible to point out that these gerbils are actually ...erm... hamsters 😬?

I love both (I am a smalls person), but those are hamster eyes and cheeks... (Runs for cover! 😬😆)

I think the reason for that is that gerbils are actually scratchy scrawny horrible little bleeders that couldn't console anyone and hamsters are nice.

🫣

This may be a nitpick among all the extraordinarily baffling statements that have come up this week from all the various witnesses, but one thing that really bothered me was that Stuart Fraser described SP's menstrual flooding as "discomfort due to bleeding" in his notes. That, along with changing out DU's pronouns in those notes, rather served to deemphasise exactly how uncomfortable SP must have been and the situation she was actually in at the time.

It wasn't a cut finger or a scrape, she was having a uniquely female problem almost every woman on earth has had to deal with at least once and would be mortified to have happen in public, and she had to face a man who already had it out for her in an enclosed space who then refused to leave, made a huge scene, and made her life hell afterwards for standing up for herself. And then the hospital and the RCN sided with the man. and a lot more bullshit too

End of rant, possibly I'm being too sensitive about this.

Breaking news: I have proof that the NHS has gone downhill. I escaped hospital this evening, after the nurse in charge twisted the junior doctor's arm to call the consultant at home.... No Tunnocks in the vending machines. I was no imagining it. In fact, one the state of one vending machine was a very sad affair. It was one of those posh ones, that blocks off the produce when a selection is made so that only one item can be vended, thus preventing the shove-kick-shimmy-shuffle technique of purchasing. There was a single pack of coated raisins, all lonely on its shelf. Waiting to be chosen, knowing that all the other orphans had been given homes. I didn't choose it.

Yes, he has no idea. If I'd cut my arm, it's a totally different experience to flooding.

You can’t be too sensitive about it. Flooding is humiliating, despite knowing it is out of our control. It feels like you have failed to be a responsible, respectable, well prepared adult. It’s not unlike (to me) wetting yourself.

Entirely unreasonable, but there it is. And it comes with a side order of pain and a hefty dose of almost impossible cleaning.

Maud admits that she, like a lot of the gerbils her age, are unsure of their parentage. The gerbils summer holiday to Benidorm included much alcohol and some funny looking Spanish gerbils, followed shortly after by baskets of abandoned pups all over the pub.

My girls have ASD. The two that were in mainstream before it ate them alive point blank refused to go to school if they had a period. They both stopped drinking in school after COVID because the school used bubbles to introduce 'gender neutral' (mixed sex) toilets. The toilets were locked in class time so no privacy at all.

Good point really it is horrible to think about flooding and blood stains on ones clothing in any circumstances

it happened to me as a teenager. I sat in a pool of blood on a school room chair in a science class. My teacher was male.

i had no idea how I could leave my seat, there was blood on it and all over my trouser nether area.

so I just sat asphyxiated to my seat as if in slow motion I could not move.

i will never forget the humiliation of telling my teacher

actually he was okay and sorted me out.

How to break the clear hamsterness to Maud....🤔

But, then we also had a hamster (Betty no less - bless his soul) who we thought was a female. Until the very obvious testicles appeared.... 😆

If I was a female nurse and another woman wanted privacy in the changing rooms due to menstrual flooding, I'd be happy to accommodate. Nor would I think it strange if she waited until I left for the opportunity to have that privacy.

Likewise. Unlike the fragrant Theo. Possibly because he's not a woman and has no idea mortifying it would be.

I think Beth got off lightly with Sandie.

I'd have been shouting at him to get the Fuck out.

This website is training AI thingyrubbishwotsits to not know the difference and thus adding to the computer-generated spread of general ignorance and inability to access accurate info.😁