Friday, August 30, 2024
Could Vaughan Gething go to the House of Lords?
The news website says that while Ms Stevens herself has not responded to our questions on the matter, the suggestion that she has been pushing for Mr Gething to get a peerage has been denied vehemently by a UK Government source. This has not stopped speculation though:
Mr Gething resigned as First Minister in July following a succession of scandals. He accepted donations totalling £200,000 from a waste group whose owner David Neal had been given two suspended prison sentences for dumping toxic sludge in the precious landscape of the Gwent Levels.
It later emerged that the group was under investigation for underpaying landfill tax to the Welsh Government by wrongly classifying the kinds of waste it was dumping.
Nation.Cymru also published the screenshot of a message from a ministerial iMessage chat that showed Mr Gething admitting that he was deleting messages because they would be disclosable under freedom of information laws. He failed to mention this in sworn evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry, claiming messages had been deleted when his phone was being “refitted” by the Senedd’s IT department.
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While Keir Starmer initially backed Mr Gething, the Labour Party came to recognise that he was more of a liability than an asset.
This week Nation.Cymru reported how Mr Gething had told his successor as First Minister Eluned Morgan that he was “ready to serve” in her Cabinet if she offers him a job in a reshuffle expected in September.
We also understand that Mr Gething has told people he would like a seat in the House of Lords and a ministerial job in the UK Labour government.
The suggestion that he could make a swift return to government was not welcomed by senior Labour figures we spoke to.
A reliable political source subsequently contacted us to say: “I have been told by three separate people that Jo Stevens has been pressing the case for Vaughan Gething to go to the House of Lords. One said she had been overheard having conversations to that effect in the Wales Office. Such representations would have been made to Number 10.”
A senior Labour source with no knowledge of such representations told us: “In normal circumstances, it would not be remarkable for a Secretary of State for Wales to suggest a peerage for a former First Minister, but these are not normal circumstances, and it would indicate poor judgement on Jo Stevens’ part to do so.”
Before they became elected politicians, Ms Stevens and Mr Gething worked together at Thompsons Solicitors in Cardiff, and they remain close friends.
Whatever the truth, there is clearly movement within the Labour Party to keep Gething on board in some senior role or another. How that will go down with his detractors within and without the Labour Party, and with voters will have to be seen.
