Sandie Peggie: Employment Tribunal, associated legal claims, and related matters - thread #68

[nauticant]

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.

A second Employment Tribunal, Sandie Peggie vs Royal College of Nursing, has just been heard. The hearing started on Wednesday 23 September 2026 and ended on Thursday 1 October 2026. It is possible that a decision will be handed down before Christmas of this year.

Additional legal claims have been raised. Sandie Peggie is taking action against three senior managers who were witnesses in the first 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 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

Thread 66: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5584074-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-66 30 September 2026 to 1 October 2026

Thread 67: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5584523-sandie-peggie-employment-tribunal-associated-legal-claims-and-related-matters-thread-67 1 October 2026 to ????

He wanted to compel her to use “cisgender” this is why the discussion about biological sex being nebulous.

Well summed up @Helleofabore

I think lots of us on MN are simply tired of being told to be kind and acquiesce to men who think they are women. I feel the same about the women who say they are men.

I have worked with several men who presented as female over time. Every single one had been an obnoxious man. That did not change with transition. Their entitlement was off the scale.

Exactly. I even posted the correct thread upthread for people to read.

Here is the real time thread with many of us observing (there are many more, Upton runs across 5 or 6 threads)

@Ereshkigalangcleg thanks followed the SP tribunal and one thing struck me was the performative nature of Upton. Playing to the audience if you like. I was aghast that as a doctor he seemed to have zero moral compass. A lot of this trans stuff feels like people are playing along with someone in our lives we know is an addict - booze/drugs/gambling etc but we tip toe around them to keep the peace calling them the ‘life and soul of the party’’ whilst privately dreading the moment they tip over into a dark place. They convince us (badly) that they are in control.

Trans feels like that. An addiction that brings attention and power to those identifying as male/female/non binary. We are now faced with a scandal - Sam Hall - who needs to be struck off and given the medical support she needs to realise she is a woman not a man. Her addiction has been fed and fed. Time is now up. She messed with children. She has been found out.

The game is up on these people. Tribunals alone this year have proved they wreak havoc and women suffer. More importantly children have been dragged into the sorry mess.

As pp said, you are not reporting directly from TT you are getting a false summary of it. At no point did NC refer to a “cisgender woman”. That is an AI misinformation. She specifically did not use that term. Hence the “biological sex is a nebulous dog whistle” when she set out what she and Sandie Peggie believed the definition of a woman was. In the next post I am going to quote the actual wording from TT (I only have Twitter/X on a different phone)

eta @Lacksie

I’ve just been reminded of Upton trying to coerce Naomi C’s speech and her calling him out on it. The “oh” from Jane Russell was an unforgettable moment.

The tribunal overran partly because Upton was an insufferable smartarse who wouldn’t answer a straight question. It’s the first tribunal I watched and his performance was jaw-droppingly arrogant and creepy. Ugh! Makes my skin crawl recalling it.

And if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears I wouldn’t have believed it.

Worth a read

https://www.pittparents.com/p/narcissistic-enticement-and-the-gender

This is the live tweeting from TT for that exchange

NC What if a woman asks to see a F dr
DU I dont see i have to give personal info to patients. I have no obligation to do that. There's no reason to. I dont see that.
NC What about a rape survivor wanting an actual W and not a TW?

DU I dont accept actual woman. I assume u mean c1s woman. ANyone can exp sexual violence, and it can be taken into account within limits of providing care in an emerg situation
NC It follows, that her wish for a F dr, a F patient wld be expected to reveal her sex trauma?

DU No any patient can refuse to see a dr. [gives an eg of a racial patient and staff issue] we accom as much as possible, w/out giving reasons
NC Imagine a woman in AE has unexplained heavy bleeding and says wants a F dr, is it ok for u to be asigned to see her?

DU It depends on the history. Catastriphic means resus, but otherwise short history and to O&G.
NC Imagine later and short history. Is she entitled to F for history
DU If she wanted me to leave, I would and get someone else. Consent is v important and take pat's wishes

seriously. dont want to impose suffering
NC So it's up to her to sya I dont feel comfy w you?
DU That's how it works. U dont know if she'd accept a TW. Y'd explain how exam works and stopping when patient wants to. Our job to make ppl comfy. It's approp for a dr to see this pat

DU Yes I consider myself empathic
NC But u think a woman in that sitn who has asked for a F dr, who realsies yr a male as she's distressed or only slowly realsises yr male. Using empathy, do u not see is v cruel?
DU Consulting rooms and cubicles so not necess in a separateroom

DU ANy person of any GI can experience or undertake sexual trauma. They often dont disclose this, whoever they are. Every single clinician wld have to say "this is my sex, GI, are u happy w me" I apprec they might find it hard to see me. My job is gathering info and treating

ppl
NC Long speech
JR It was a long Q
NC U said wasnt a given wld be in a room w you,
DU Not a gynae room but ent room used [listing all the rooms which NC cuts off]
J U can aske me to stop a Q but not do it yrself
NC Please do
DU there's no specific gynae room

NC When I refer to a W I mean bio W, what y'd call c!s woman, also those you'd called assigned female at birth that may say they're men, NB, agender or demiboy. Just the beginning of a long list of infinite genders. I refer to biol catagory of women whatever their GI

JR She can't determines DU's language
J She's not doing that, it's about her own language
NC exactly right and I havent insisted anyone of witnesses uses the C's language preferences.
J That was my finding
NC Re a T identifying man you will understand TW
DU We discussed

yday, .so now getting confused. Yes,understand [after clarification]
NC When I talk about sex I'm talking about bodies that make eggs and sperm
DU I dont agree w you and may use my own language
NC The J has said u can use the language u want
DU Is that a Q?

continued in the same gaslighting, evasive way…

https://x.com/tribunaltweets/status/1889254913848340

So Lacksie or the summary Lacksie has posted has falsely added in words and changed attributions.

It was, and it’s clear what we all thought watching it live.

Absolutely.

Speaking of language. There is an additional power dynamic that is very clear and it is the demand to use the demanded language.

Any male person who is in a position of power such as a doctor is, who presents himself as a female doctor when the request for a female doctor is made, then demands that a female patient reject his treatment with him right there in front of her or treating him otherwise assumes consent is acting in a predatory way. He is acting in a way that intimidates a patient into consent

Not only is it intimidating because he is a male doctor .

By demanding that female patients use language such as ‘cis gender female doctor’ when rejecting a male doctor, this puts female people in the position of having again to use the demanded language of a group’s philosophical belief. It means that the power dynamic is again with those male doctors who claim to be female.

Because it puts female people in a position where they have to know to use the specific language that may have a greater chance of avoiding having to deal with the situation where a male doctor comes.

All because a group has acquired the use of common language which then renders the established reference terms that the majority understand to have clear definitional boundaries and they deny that they have done so because they have their own philosophical belief in what those words should mean.

It again forces compliance to a group’s philosophical belief and is evidence that communication is negatively impacted by that belief.

Yes and Jane Russell’s constant interruptions made it almost like a three-way conversation, not a barrister cross examining a respondent.

A lot of us watched a lot of the tribunal and discussed it in real time on here. This is why we know things clearly some other posters don’t.

We also know what was actually said in court and what Tribunal Tweets reported in précis. Because we were there.

Yes it immediately struck me as an inaccurate AI summary too.

I asked for a summary via google and the AI gave me a similar hallucinatory summary as Lacksie's, using a similar, inaccurate ideological twist to the language used. It even included a similar preface to Lacksie's about how we've mistaken the discussion around the tribunal with what was said during the tribunal.

There is an old comment from Beachcomber that justice must not only be seen to be done but has to be seen to be believed.

Re-reading Uptons evidence I had forgotten how frequent & how unpleasant Jane Russell's interruptions were. On the page she comes across just as snippy as she appeared to us observing. By all accounts she has an activist husband & a trans child so is not an impartial participant.

Upton was on the stand for days, not minutes. Evidence needs to be taken as a whole.

The section of the evidence in which he said he would consider misgendering to be an aggressive act may have been separate from the questions about attending when a patient has asked for female-only care, but it is reasonable to apply one scenario to the other. It would be hard for a patient to say 'I want to see a woman. Not you, an actual woman.' without misgendering - by implication, if not explicitly.

"The section of the evidence in which he said he would consider misgendering to be an aggressive act..."

Oh yes! I remember him saying that too.

In political terms this would be ‘spin doctoring’ of a text representing a verbatim statement. If only we were able to see a recording of the actual proceedings but there were more than enough posters viewing and reporting the proceedings, they can’t all have been wrong about the demeanour and intonation/coercive nature of DU’s language. I did ponder that DU’s exit from the NHS to far flung shores was a realisation that ‘the game was up’ and actually in breach of NHS regulations despite the protestations and ignorance of NHS management . Unfortunately despite ‘the game being up’ here it’s not in Australia…YET.
I’m sure sometime in the future there will a sort of Netflix type attempt of reenactment of the debacle. Who will portray the male lead and how will the players be judged?

This is quite an enlightening post and I keep coming back to it.

These two paragraphs are contradictory UNLESS you view it through the lens of the Upton’s ideology.

“She also said that she did not consider herself obliged to disclose personal medical information to patients, which is a perfectly reasonable position.”

”And she explicitly stated that she would respect the wishes of any patient who did not want to be treated by her, emphasising the importance of consent and patient comfort.”

By presenting himself to a patient who has made the request of only a female doctor, this doctor has already disrespected the wishes of the patient by assuming that the patient used the reference definitions as per his personal philosophical belief that is not that of the majority and is not mainstream (despite some people’s assertions that it is ).

By presenting himself to a patient who have made the request of a female doctor, he has also disclosed his own personal medical information. The patient requested a female doctor. He present’s himself thereby disclosing to the female patient that he believes he fills the requirement of the request.

On many levels, this action is unacceptable. Because of the power held by a doctor and the trust that patients have that a doctor will be honest and ethical, the female patient can react in many ways. One is trust that this male person is the female person she requested = her consent is negated because he has used his personal philosophical belief to decide he fulfilled that request and has not gained full consent through disclosure. The patient trusted him to do the right thing in respecting her request.

The patient who understands this is a male then must decide if she wishes to risk a negative outcome by rejecting him and may feel they have no choice. Again, that is not consent that is coerced compliance.

The only time a female patient in that situation can give full consent is to have full information in the first place.

In that case, patients do indeed require full disclosure that this male person is a male person and this would by that description meet the ‘knowing medical information’ requirement. In the same way that any patient requesting a same sex doctor needs to know that doctor’s ’medical information’ when it pertains to sex category of human.

Those two statements are a direct contradiction to each other when you consider the facts relating to consent and the need for full knowledge of a person’s sex category.

Didn't the whole discussion of GI terminology lead to the classic DU pseudo- guff of

• I am clearly not a robot so I must be biological
• I know that I am a woman
• Therefore I am a biological woman

I can't remember how this dovetailed into the general conversation about DU treating a patient who had asked for a biologically female doctor.

It was that or similar.

It is repeating the lines that McKinnon / Ivy and many other male people use. It is another philosophical attempt to claim something material and objective using deconstruction.

It never makes it true though.

exactly!!! No where does DU say that a woman refused a trans doctor would be accused of being transphobic and punished.
Instead she emphasises that patients wishes should be respected regardless of their reason/ without requiring a reason, that she would absolutely not treat a person who requested a diff doctor and that patients' dignity , consent etc is of central importance.

the twisting of the testimony is really quite outrageous and thoroughly transparent.