A First Minister on the ropes, facing questions about his judgement? No, it’s not hapless Hamza Yousaf this time. Instead, the latest legislator in the firing line is none other than Vaughan Gething, the recently-selected head of the Welsh government at Cardiff Bay. Gething has been in the job for less than six weeks but is already facing a storm of criticism about the way in which he got it.
The former economy minister narrowly triumphed in last month’s Labour leadership contest by 51.7 per cent of the vote to Jeremy Miles’ 48.3 per cent. But Gething’s subsequent tenure has been dominated by questions about the £200,000 his campaign accepted from a company whose owner was twice convicted of environmental offences. David Neal of the firm Dauson Environmental Group was given a suspended prison sentence in 2013 for illegally dumping waste on a conservation site. Four years later he was prosecuted again for not removing it.
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