After less than four months, Vaughan Gething resigned as First Minister of Wales. The media had celebrated his half-African heritage, as his mother is an immigrant from Zambia.
He is involved in two big scandals.
Vaughan Gething received two £100,000 donations from the Dauson Environmental Group, which owns Atlantic Recycling and Neal Soil Suppliers, while he was the Labour Party’s leadership candidate. The company’s owner is David Neal, who has twice been given huge fines and suspended prison sentences for pollution: first in 2013 and again in 2017.
Gething was called on to return the money last March but said he would not. It was later revealed that Gething had intervened on behalf of Atlantic Recycling in 2016 to ask the Welsh Department of Natural Resources to ease restrictions on the company. The company also needed Welsh ministerial approval for a proposed new solar farm when the donations were made.
It was also discovered that Vaughan Gething deleting messages between government ministers on August 17, 2020. He was Minister for Health and Social Services at the time. Then he used his official government issued phone to send a message stating, “I’m deleting the messages in this group. They can be captured in a Freedom of Information [FOI] request.” This was leaked to the media after he became First Minister.
Last May, he sacked Hannah Blythyn, who had been the Minister for Social Partnership. Blythyn says it was retaliation because Gething incorrectly believed she was the source of the leak.
