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Vaughan GethingMS
Official portrait, 2021
First Minister-designate of Wales
Assuming office 20 March 2024
Monarch	Charles III
Succeeding	Mark Drakeford
Leader of Welsh Labour
Incumbent
Assumed office 16 March 2024
Deputy	Carolyn Harris
Preceded by	Mark Drakeford
Minister for the Economy
Incumbent
Assumed office 13 May 2021
First Minister	Mark Drakeford
Preceded by	Ken Skates
Minister for Health and Social Services
In office 19 May 2016 – 13 May 2021
First Minister	Carwyn Jones Mark Drakeford
Preceded by	Mark Drakeford
Succeeded by	Eluned Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Ely
Deputy Minister for Health
In office 11 September 2014 – 19 May 2016
First Minister	Carwyn Jones
Minister	Mark Drakeford
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Rebecca Evans
Deputy Minister for Tackling Poverty
In office 26 June 2013 – 11 September 2014
First Minister	Carwyn Jones
Minister	Jeffrey Cuthbert
Member of the Senedd for Cardiff South and Penarth
Incumbent
Assumed office 6 May 2011
Preceded by	Lorraine Barrett
Majority	10,606 (29.2%)
Personal details
Born	(1974-03-15) 15 March 1974 (age 50) Lusaka, Zambia
Nationality	Welsh
Political party	Labour Co-operative
Spouse	Michelle Gething
Alma mater	University of Wales
Occupation	Solicitor, trade unionist
Signature
Website	www.vaughangething.wales

Vaughan Gething (born 15 March 1974) is a Welsh Labour and Co-operative politician who is First Minister-designate of Wales and the leader of Welsh Labour since 2024. He previously served as the Minister for Health and Social Services from 2016 to 2021. He has been the Member of the Senedd (MS) for Cardiff South and Penarth since 2011.

In March 2024, Gething won the Welsh Labour leadership election to replace Mark Drakeford and is set to become First Minister of Wales, which would make him the first Black person to hold the role, as well as the first Black leader of any European country.

Early life

Gething was born in Zambia in 1974, where his father, a white Welsh veterinarian from Ogmore-by-Sea in Glamorgan, met his mother, who is a Black Zambian and was working as a chicken farmer. Gething describes his father as "a white Welsh economic migrant". When he was two years old, he moved to Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, Wales, with his family, which also included three brothers and a sister. In Monmouthshire, his family experienced racism as an employer withdrew a job offer to Gething's father upon seeing the rest of his family. Speaking of the incident, Gething said: "They said, 'Come back with your family and we'll sign everything up', but he walked in with my mother, and a trail of brown boys, and the job offer got withdrawn". His father eventually found work in Dorset, England, where Gething was brought up.

Gething studied at Beaminster Comprehensive and Sixth Form in Dorset, followed by Aberystwyth University, where he graduated with a degree in Law in 1999; he then attended the University of Cardiff Law School, University of Wales. During his academic career, Gething became President of Aberystwyth University Guild of Students, as well as the first Black president of the National Union of Students Wales.

Professional career

Having completed his training as a solicitor with the trade union firm Thompsons in Cardiff in 2001, Gething chose to specialise in employment law. He eventually became a partner in Thompsons in 2007.

In 2008, at the age of 34, Gething became the youngest President of Wales TUC, also becoming the first mixed race person to serve in the role.

Political career

Gething joined the Labour Party when he was 17, to campaign in the 1992 UK general election. He contested Mid and West Wales for Labour in the inaugural elections to the National Assembly for Wales in 1999, but was not elected.

He served as a councillor from 2004 to 2008, representing Butetown electoral ward on Cardiff Council, having been elected with a majority of two votes over candidate Betty Campbell. Following the election, Campbell sent a complaint letter to Cardiff Council alleging that Gething had infringed election rules by handing out leaflets to voters as they entered polling stations and telling them how to vote. Campbell initially intended to have the vote re-examined in the High Court, but abandoned this because of the estimated cost of £12,000.

In the 2011 National Assembly for Wales election, Gething was selected as the Welsh Labour candidate for the Cardiff South and Penarth constituency in the Senedd, after Lorraine Barrett, who had represented Cardiff South and Penarth since the Senedd's creation in 1999, had announced her intention to stand down from her role. On 5 May 2011, Gething increased the Labour vote with a swing of 12.5%. At 13,814, his share of the vote was over 50%, giving him a majority of 6,259 over the Welsh Conservative Party candidate, Ben Gray, placed second. At the following 2016 election, Gething once again increased his majority in terms of vote share.

Following the 2016 election, First Minister Carwyn Jones promoted Gething to the Welsh Cabinet, nominating him as Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport.

Gething did not support Jeremy Corbyn in either the 2015 or 2016 Labour Party leadership election (against challenger Owen Smith); however, he stated in a 2017 BBC Radio Wales interview that he would still like to see Corbyn as Prime Minister, saying quote, "I want a Labour prime minister - and that means Jeremy Corbyn being prime minister. I don't think it matters whether I'm a fan or not - it matters whether I think he can do the job in running the country".

In August 2017, Gething walked away in the middle of an interview on ITV Wales, when questioned by journalist James Crichton-Smith over his decision not to hold a public inquiry into Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, following allegations that an employee had sexually assaulted vulnerable patients.

Gething, alongside Eluned Morgan and Mark Drakeford, was one of the three contenders in the 2018 election for the leadership of Welsh Labour, but was defeated by the latter candidate. Drakeford subsequently re-appointed Gething in the Welsh Cabinet, by nominating him as Health Minister, with the position renamed as Minister for Health and Social Services.

On 13 May 2021, Gething was appointed as new Minister for the Economy, replacing Ken Skates.

Minister for Health and management of the COVID-19 pandemic

Gething served as the Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

On 12 March 2020, despite a steady surge in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wales and other sporting events getting cancelled, Gething resisted calls to postpone a rugby union match between Wales and Scotland at the Principality Stadium, which was due to be sold-out with 74,000 spectators. On the following day, the Welsh Rugby Union announced that the match was officially cancelled. Gething justified his decision in a BBC Radio Wales interview, saying quote, "The medical advice about the risk to people going to the rugby didn't change. What did change was the fact that the rest of sporting world decided that, regardless of that advice, they wanted to put off events".

On 22 April 2020, Gething was caught swearing about fellow Labour MS Jenny Rathbone during a virtual session of the Senedd on Zoom. After Rathbone had asked the Minister a few questions about the Welsh Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he failed to mute his microphone as he told an unknown person, "What the fuck is the matter with her?". Some undisclosed Labour MSs contacted by BBC Wales said they were also "very angry" over Gething's actions.

In May of the same year, Gething was reportedly photographed by a Sun reporter eating chips with his young son in a local park, prompting criticism by those who suggested he was breaking the COVID-19 restrictions he had imposed himself. Gething denied the accusations, and the Welsh Government stated nothing he had done contravened such regulations.

Gething was questioned at the UK COVID-19 Inquiry in July 2023, due to his former role as Wales' Minister for Health during the COVID-19 pandemic; in his deposition, he admitted that he had never read a report on Exercise Cygnus, a simulation exercise to estimate the impact of a hypothetical influenza pandemic on the UK population.

2024 Labour leadership election

In December 2023, Gething became one of two candidates in the Welsh Labour leadership election to replace Drakeford as party leader and Wales' First Minister.

On 16 January, Gething and the other candidate, Jeremy Miles, took part in a hustings event to get the nomination from the trade union, Unite. Miles' team were then informed of a rule requiring that only people who had been "lay officials" could be nominated. Gething therefore received the nomination. Miles claimed he was unfairly blocked from the union nomination. An unnamed Unite official was quoted by BBC News as saying that the nomination of Gething was a "shocking mess". Journalist Martin Shipton later uncovered that Gething had only joined Unite a few months beforehand.

On 16 March, it was announced that Gething had won the election with 51,7% of the vote: as a result, he would become the first Black First Minister of Wales, as well as the first Black leader of any European country.

Atlantic Recycling

In February 2024 it emerged that Gething had received a campaign donation of £200,000 from David John Neal, a businessman who had previously been convicted twice of environmental offences as head of two companies, Atlantic Recycling and Neal Soil Suppliers. Gething's ministerial colleague and Miles supporter, Lee Waters, described the donation as "completely unjustifiable and wrong".

The following month BBC Wales reported that it had obtained letters written by Gething in 2016 and 2018 to Natural Resources Wales requesting that it ease restrictions on Neal's company Atlantic Recycling. Former Welsh Government minister, Leighton Andrews, was quoted as saying that the donations were "damaging devolution" and called for Gething's campaign to return the donation of £200,000.

Personal life

Gething and his wife Michelle live in Penarth, where he has lived since 2011. He is a member of the trade unions GMB, UNISON and Unite.

External links

• Official website
• Biography – Senedd website

References

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• 1974 births
• Living people
• 21st-century Welsh lawyers
• Alumni of the University of Wales
• Black British politicians
• Councillors in Cardiff
• Labour Co-operative members of the Senedd
• Politicians from Cardiff
• Politicians from Dorset
• Wales AMs 2011–2016
• Wales MSs 2016–2021
• Wales MSs 2021–2026
• Welsh people of Zambian descent
• Zambian emigrants to the United Kingdom
• Zambian people of Welsh descent