A transsexual doctor at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, was attempting to ‘mislead’ the Sandie Peggie tribunal, it has been informed.
Cell phone notes created by female-identifying Beth Upton MD, following a dispute with the nurse, Sandie Peggie, 51, had been edited, it was claimed. Upton herself complained to the board about Peggie’s behaviour. Peggie was accused of misconduct, failures of patient care and misgendering Upton.
The nurse was suspended from work at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, after she raised objections to the trans doctor using the female changing area on on 24th December 2023. The nurse in response to her suspension, launched an employment tribunal appeal against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton.
It was heard that NHS Fife did not appoint a forensic or in-person check of Dr Upton’s phone in May 2025.
The health board’s security analyst ‘did not have a technical answer’ for data that did not appear straightforward on dates on Google Notes made by Dr Upton, the hearing was told. Mr Borwick, director of KJB Computer Forensics Consultancy, had been commissioned by Ms Peggie’s representatives to compile a report in to the notes. IT expert Jim Borwick agreed with the suggestion the trans doctor ‘was trying to mislead’ the tribunal.
Mr Borwick wrote, ‘Dr Upton is silent on fact that Notes can be rearranged with relative ease’, and that he was ‘perplexed’ and ‘at a loss’ as to how the discrepancies had occurred, and was told ‘notes did not include patient care allegations Dr Upton made about Ms Peggie’.
A note in focus from December 18, 2023, logged: ‘Working nights, won’t make eye contact, won’t acknowledge my presence, haven’t had direct conversation but can feel the dismissal/hostility.’
However, the tribunal was told it was edited on December 26 at 1.21am.
Mr Borwick informed the hearing: ‘In addition to text on that date, this had been added so it is not contemporaneous.’
Jane Russell, KC, for NHS Fife and Dr Upton, asked: ‘When you said Dr Upton is silent on fact that notes can be re-arranged, you’re suggesting that Dr Upton is trying to mislead the tribunal?’
The IT expert replied: ‘I suppose that’s my comment, yes.’
Ms Russell asked Mr Borwick if he had been instructed to come up with an ‘explanation that there were lies on the part of Dr Upton’ and to ‘undermine Dr Upton’s account of patient care allegations’.
But the witness told her he was not ‘trying to undermine anything’, and added: ‘I was told to recover notes about patient care allegations; no reason was given, just to recover those notes.’
Ms Russell said of one screenshot, ‘the conundrum is that the edited date predates the created date’, and asked the witness if ‘the only explanation for discrepancy is that Dr Upton is lying about creation dates?’.
He said he could not recreate this, and neither could NHS Fife’s information security manager Peter Donaldson.
The tribunal heard a note entitled ‘weird incident 26.08.23’ was timestamped showing it was made on October 26, 2023, according to Google.
Mr Donaldson told the tribunal: ‘I don’t believe Dr Upton was trying to mislead us in any way.
‘I completely agree this is how Google presents; on the face of it the October date is the earliest date. I don’t dispute that. The notes supplementary to that are the same.’
Sandie Peggie Cleared
But NHS Fife confirmed on Wednesday that an internal hearing had concluded there was “insufficient evidence to support a finding of misconduct”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom
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