What's going on in the Kingdom of Fife?
Can a Kingdom go mad?
Long before Edinburgh became the Scottish seat of centralised rule, Fife had Kings. It is commonly referred to as “The Kingdom” because, well, it is proud of its history. If you are following the Peggie v NHS Fife employment tribunal it you’d be forgiven for wondering when The Kingdom of Fife was demoted to the Feifdom of Feelings.
What’s coming out of the tribunal between Sandie Peggie and NHS Fife is more eyebrow raising than anything surprising found in a “foreign body abdominal x-ray” at Victoria Hospital.
The Peggie case is not an ordinary workplace dispute, it’s a spotlight on how women in the NHS are treated by a system which doesn’t understand their roles, rights, or the risks we are exposed to.
Mrs Peggie has 30 years’ experience, mostly working nights in Kirkcaldy A+E, and I bet she has seen it all, is unflappable, knows where everything is and what everything means. I was always grateful to work with such women, they’ll point you in the right direction if you’re a bit stuck - as long as you don’t take the piss. If you do then there will be consequences - as NHS Fife is finding out.
Yesterday’s evidence from Isla Bumba, Fife NHS’s EDI lead, was…well, eyebrow raising. Astonishingly, Mrs Bumba, responsible for overseeing policies for the safety of women, didn’t know the definition of rape. The 2023 report by the Women’s Rights Network (WRN) titled “When We Are At Our Most Vulnerable”, demonstrated systemic failures to protect staff and patients from sexual assault in NHS hospitals. They found that 6,539 rapes and sexual assaults were reported in UK hospitals between January 2019 and October 2022 and that 4.1% of these resulted in charges or summons.
A parallel investigation by The BMJ and The Guardian found 35,606 incidents of rape, sexual assault, stalking, harassment, and abusive remarks reported in NHS premises from 2017-2022 - and again, disciplinary action was taken in a few cases.
Both reports concluded that Trusts lack dedicated policies for handling sexual assault or harassment, ignoring the systemic scale of the issue.
It is part of an EDI lead’s responsibility to ensure that the privacy, safety, and dignity of female patients and staff are respected and protected. If female staff or patients are eg being made to undress in front of male-bodied staff, the EDI lead has a duty to assess whether women’s rights, religious needs, disability access, and sex-based privacy are being upheld or overridden - and if it’s the latter, take steps to at least mitigate that impact.
Mrs Bumba also said under oath that she’d never heard of Stonewall, which is surprising as NHS Fife regularly holds Pride/LGBTQ+ celebrations, trans-awareness activities, equality sessions and she wears a rainbow lanyard in her staff portrait.
Instead of forming robust policy based on legal frameworks, it seems this senior management team mostly had little chats on Teams. They saw no need for taking notes and so there is no clear record of who said what, who took responsibility, what was agreed, or which actions were taken - despite these decisions affecting the safety, dignity, and careers of employees and patients.
You’d be forgiven for concluding this means Fife is a magical Kingdom where there is no need for safeguarding - but, nope, here are some rather famous locals:
Katie Dolatowski - a man who was convicted for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket toilet in Kirkcaldy.
Paris Green - a man who participated in the torture and murder of a man in Glenrothes, and has been housed mostly in the female prison estate since he was convicted.
Tiffany Scott - an extremely violent offender from Fife who stalked a teenage girl from inside prison. At least he was kept in the male estate even after he chose a female name. Prior to saying that he was a woman he called himself Obi Wan Kenobi and Mighty Almighty.
However, back to what went on in the Victoria hospital.
Sandie Peggie, who has been a nurse for longer than Isla Bumba has been alive, raised concerns about the loss of single sex changing rooms, was ignored by her managers, raised it with Dr Upton directly and was suspended. Today we learned that part of the issue was her use of the incorrect tone - but there is no policy or guidance to explain to staff what the correct tone might be.
One of these woman earns money by dealing with blood and guts, death and destruction on 12 hour shifts, the other is on-call for pronoun emergencies. Mrs Bumba’s salary is about double that of Mrs Peggie.
There are nine more days of this extraordinary case. I don’t think my eyebrows could possibly go higher, not even if the judgment is that Fife should become a Queendom.
You can follow the case proceedings on Tribunal Tweets, they have a team of fast-fingered volunteers who have permission to live tweet from court. You can support their work here on substack:
Fife history:
https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/areafife/index.html
WRN report:
https://www.womensrights.network/hospital-report
https://www.clinicalservicesjournal.com/story/41744/investigation-reveals-shocking-figures-on-sexual-assault-in-the-nhs
Katie Dolatowski:
Paris Green:
Tiffany Scott:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-68442073
Mumsnet threads on the case:
Tribunal Tweets:
@tribunaltweets
Excellent article 👏