Jacob Williams https://jacobwilliams.com

Since my last blogpost Wales has had a new first minister, Vaughan Gething. Facing a historic no-confidence vote tomorrow with a strong Pembrokeshire connection, his stock is tanking.

Mr. Gething’s path to his narrow Welsh Labour leadership election victory earlier this year was greased by an enormous cash injection from a known crook.

Multimillionaire David Neal, who controls a network of businesses in the lucrative waste sector, has admitted to many serious environmental crimes over the years, landing personal fines and even two suspended jail sentences.

In 2013 he pled guilty to illegally dumping waste on the Gwent Levels – a site of special scientific interest – and again in 2017 for not removing it.

Gething is known to Neal. Dauson Environmental Group Limited, one of Neal’s holding companies, is registered within Gething’s constituency.

In his capacity as Cardiff South and Penarth’s representative, Gething has over several years repeatedly lobbied the regulator to go easy on Neal’s companies subject to safety and environmental breach probes.

As part of the Labour party’s internal process to replace Mark Drakeford, Neal through his Dauson Environmental Group outfit gave Gething’s campaign £200,000.

In two transactions of £100k each, it’s a sum many regard as having made the difference in the surprisingly-close contest.

It’s also of a magnitude I think many fail to appreciate – life-changing money to the vast majority of Wales’ population.

Even by Warren Buffett’s standards, £200k to aid the election of a small country’s largest political party’s leader is an amount giving rise to fair questions of reciprocity. What can or will Gething do, or is he expected to do, in return for Neal’s largesse?

Gething of course denies any quid-pro-quo, and has even gone on the attack. But his defensive claims – that he accepted the money all within the rules – have to contend with his well-documented prior links to Neal and his network of companies with an abysmal record of environmental impropriety at the expense of Wales’ countryside.

Further twists include how Neal donated £55,000 to Mr. Gething’s unsuccessful 2018 leadership campaign. And how another David Neal company received, whilst Gething served as economy minister, a £400,000 loan from the Development Bank of Wales which describes itself as “a wholly owned subsidiary of the Welsh Government.”

Timely documentary

BBC Wales, Monday, released a half-hour documentary on Gething’s tangled web, focussing on the Pembrokeshire connection.

One of Neal’s companies’ sites – Withyhedge landfill north of Haverfordwest – is the cause of a great stink.

Since late last year noxious pongs have emanated from the facility. The smell is ruining people’s lives for many miles around.

It all started not too long after Neal’s company took ownership, suggesting Withyhedge – a fully-permitted operation – is now being used in a way in which it hadn’t been before.

Credible claims are swirling that this legacy site of a bygone era – located, incongruously, in Pembrokeshire’s green rolling landscape – has became a lawless pan-Wales dumping ground.

The regulator, National Resources Wales (NRW) is supposedly on the case, having laid down many sweeping enforcement requirements. And they have been complied with – yet the sulphurous hum pervades to this day. Think: rotten eggs on steroids.

NRW is wide open to accusations (denied) of inaction, incompetence or at best, inertia, at Withyhedge.

This is particularly troubling given how NRW is a non-departmental public body, entirely funded by the Welsh Government which is now headed by a man who might owe his position to the unprecedentedly-large payment given to him by the culprit who he knew was a habitual enviro-crime convict.

Whilst I find it hard to believe that Gething would – or could even if he wanted to – skew NRW’s treatment of the Withyhedge case, public perception isn’t easily explained away.

I have previously referred to NRW’s slow pursuit at Withyhedge as a “suck-it-and-see” approach. I said so at a webcasted council meeting in March to denials from NRW’s cordial and well-informed officers.

I have no doubt that they truly believed their enforcement requirements would work – but such passage of time suggests NRW still doesn’t really know how to stop the stink, or how it can get the operator to do the same.

Meanwhile, Pembrokeshire County Council, which doesn’t actually have any environmental enforcement status in the matter, is also in the early stages of its own, rather rare, form of legal challenge against the site operators with a view to preventing the pong.

PCC is in the early stages of seeking: “…an injunction prohibiting [the operator] from wrongfully causing or permitting noxious and offensive gases to escape from the Landfill.”

Follow the money

Among the BBC documentary’s greatest revelations was how Vaughan Gething was offered, and rejected, a loan from an unnamed senior Welsh Labour figure which would have allowed him to repay Neal’s questionable contribution.

Viewers are also left wondering whether Gething solicited his huge donation, or if this grubby gratuity fell off the back of one of Neal’s wagons to Gething’s great surprise.

We may never know for sure – but I have to say this well-edited documentary shows there is one politician in Cardiff Bay who gives every appearance of a man keen to turn each nut and bolt of this whopper.

I think star among the political contributors to this investigative piece was Plaid Cymru’s nascent leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth. He clearly has his eye on the ball with this scandal.

Cynics might say his other eye is on next month’s Westminster general election, but I put ap Iorwerth’s focus down to his long journalistic experience. He obviously has a good nose for a proper story, and this stinker’s a stonker – reeking all the way from Haverfordwest to Cardiff Bay.

Last month he ended Plaid Cymru’s all-but-coalition ‘co-operation agreement’ carved out by his predecessor, which propped-up Welsh Labour’s minority Senedd administration.

This was probably a no-brainer – the donation row wasn’t going away, and it provided good cover for Plaid Cymru’s hasty retreat amid great flak it was receiving from the agricultural sector for facilitating Labour’s controversial farming policies.

It of course goes without saying that the Welsh Conservatives, gung-ho for Gething, are milking this one for all it’s worth. And why shouldn’t they?

Andrew RT Davies – their rather beguiling Cardiff Bay leader who’s always good value but rarely original – predictably features.

JW’s highlight is shown in the following clip. A squirming Gething, unable to escape the roving reporter whilst walking across an open field, evades questions by pretending he’s talking to his bag-carriers:

The short film is, in my opinion, excellent, although I did have to doubt some of its research process.

Much is made of the claim that this thirty-minute piece exclusively reveals that Gething’s donor was under fresh criminal investigation when the £200k was handed over.

This has been public knowledge for over two months.

Anybody who watched Pembrokeshire County Council’s March 26th scrutiny committee meeting webcast will have heard from the horse’s mouth that the regulator was actively probing Withyhedge from a criminal perspective, separately and in addition to their enforcement action.

It’s difficult to credit, but I can only conclude that this filmed public event was not known of by the documentary makers, or they would surely have used clips from it.

And I’m not talking about some rambling contributions from East Williamston’s cat-loving councillor from 3:43:38!

In attendance at this meeting was none other than Gething’s pongy philanthropist: Mr. David Neal.

What a missed opportunity – because Mr. Neal spoke on camera many times.

I suggested how anyone in Mr. Neal’s position under criminal investigation would have been well advised by his lawyers to have kept his mouth shut.

To say he spilt his guts on the council’s webcast would be going overboard, however he surely said and admitted more than enough.

As a council lawyer observed in response to a question of mine at a later meeting: “If we have to go to a full-on case, we will be able to refer to Mr. Neal’s own comments in this chamber when he said that it had ‘inconvenienced businesses,’ I think in his own words, so he’s damned out of his own mouth, really…” (See: 1:14:28 of the webcast.)

In the balance

An interesting aspect to the Gething donor row is how all opposition parties are uniting behind a strong message: that Welsh Labour is burying its head in the sand over the public opinion, and how, like the smell in Pembrokeshire, this issue won’t go away whether he survives his ouster vote or not.

With such razor-thin numbers in play – all thirty opposition members are expected to vote against the first minister, the other thirty seats are held by Labour – it only takes one of the Labour cohort to do for Gething. Even an abstention would be enough in the vote, which is expected to be held late tomorrow.

Many are looking at Hannah Blythyn MS, who only weeks into his reign was fired by Gething from his cabinet.

Ms. Blythyn denies his claim that she leaked messages which suggested he lied to the Covid inquiry about deleting governmental communications during the pandemic when he was health minister.

This is another emerging problem for Gething which has already led him to fiercely deny that he might face serious criminal claims of his own – for perjury.

But the clever money says Blythyn knows what’s good for her, and will row in behind her sacker.

Whilst a vote against Gething by Blythyn, or even an abstention, would have the obvious appearance of revenge, it must be obvious by now just how damaging he is to both party and country.

And maybe more revelations are to come. A Dispatches documentary into Wales’ embattled first minister is said to be in the pipeline, to air on Channel 4 towards the end of this month.

One other name – who unlike Blythyn won’t have any sights set on political career longevity – has been touted as a potential lance to the Gething boil: Jenny Rathbone MS.

Rathbone, a rarity among Labour politicians for saying things that many would only think, is also said to be unhappy about the UK party’s imposition of candidates to fight some of Wales’ upcoming general election seats.

I think most would agree that the chance for Gething to repay the dodgy donation and move on has long since passed. The issue is about his poor judgment, which has only been compounded by his dismissive attitude to this scandal as it has developed.

None of this should come as any surprise.

With a history of poor judgment, the man who was Wales’ covid lockdown-picnicking health minister is among the country’s most gaffe-prone politicians of recent times.

Before this funding furore, Mr. Gething’s greatest notoriety was for his excruciating on-mic swearing outburst during a pandemic-era remote meeting:

His angry off-camera contribution was all the more notable as it was made against a fellow Labour politician.

She had been asking probing questions which the then health supremo wasn’t enjoying.

“What the f**k is the matter with her?” gaffe-prone Gething is heard ranting, in the instantly-viral Zoom clip, to the visible mirth of so many cross-party colleagues.

He might have even more choice words for the same colleague tomorrow night.

Her name? Jenny Rathbone.