Leaked government texts sent to Covid-19 inquiry

The group chat was on the Apple iMessage platform

Leaked texts between Welsh government ministers during the Covid-19 pandemic have been sent to the Covid Inquiry.

Welsh Labour ministers agreed on Wednesday with a Conservative motion to force the government to release evidence behind the firing of ex minister Hannah Blythyn, who the first minister blamed for leaking the messages to journalists.

But the government effectively argued that the motion was moot - First Minister Vaughan Gething said information that went beyond the request had already been made publicly available on Tuesday.

Mr Gething, who announced his resignation as first minister on Tuesday, said he acted on basis of "decency and integrity" in how he handled the leak.

The Welsh government confirmed that the text messages were sent to the inquiry between 16 and 17 May. The inquiry previously said it was taking the row "very seriously".

Under pressure to produce evidence to support the sacking of Ms Blythyn, on Tuesday the Welsh government published the unredacted messages from two different copies of the group chat.

In the Senedd on Wednesday the Conservatives attempted to force the first minister to produce, "with appropriate redactions to ensure anonymity of witnesses", all evidence he relied upon for the sacking of Ms Blythyn.

Their motion used a specific part of the law that governs the Senedd to oblige the Welsh government's publication.

Andrew RT Davies, Welsh Conservative Senedd leader, said it was the "duty" of the opposition to use the law "to seek the evidence of the first minister used in his dismissal for Hannah Blythyn".

Mr Gething has been criticised for not holding an investigation into the leak before the sacking.

Plaid Cymru's Rhun ap Iorwerth said: "We're being asked to play a game of joining the dots here to conclude that the member in question was directly involved in the release of information with the supporting evidence being in rather short supply".

Vaughan Gething announced his resignation as first minister on Tuesday

Mr Gething defended his decision to sack Ms Blythyn again on Wednesday, and said he did not want it to become "common practice" to publish evidence to support his decision.

He said the full exchange from the chat had been submitted to the Covid inquiry.

"I wish this had not happened. I wish the image had not been taken and provided to a journalist and kept for nearly four years before being provided," he said.

He added: "I regret where we are and I regret the harm caused to many people through this, but I have done and will continue to do for as long as I'm a Member of the Senedd, not just a first minister, to act on the basis of decency and integrity, which is what I have done in reaching this difficult decision."

How Mr Gething handled the sacking of Ms Blythyn has been one of the controversies that have dominated his time as first minister.

The Welsh government has said that the person whose phone the leaked messages came from had been identified from an unredacted copy of the messages sent to officials by a journalist seeking comment.

Website Nation.Cymru reported in May that Mr Gething had told other ministers in a iMessage group chat in 2020, when he was health minister, that he was deleting texts from the conversation.

The report led to questions about whether Mr Gething had misled the Covid inquiry over the deletion of messages. Mr Gething denied that he had deleted anything.

He later sacked junior minister Ms Blythyn, connecting her to the leak. She denied being the source of the story, as did the website involved, but Mr Gething later said that there was straightforward evidence that it came from her phone.

The iMessage platform displays the initials of other participants of a group chat at the top of a screen, but not the initials of the person whose phone it is.

In a statement released shortly before he announced he would quit as first minister, Mr Gething said that it could be seen that the only missing initials on the image were from the former minister for social partnership, Ms Blythyn, by comparing the membership of the chat on the different copies.

"It is also clear that the image was captured in 2020 and was retained before the leak became evident earlier this year," he said.

Mr Gething said in the group chat: "I'm deleting the messages in this group. They can be captured in an FOI and I think we are all in the right place on the choice being made."

Julie James - the former local government secretary who was one of the four individuals who quit Mr Gething's government forcing him to resign - appeared to agree with Mr Gething.

"Good point Vaughan," she could be seen to say in the second unredacted screengrab.

At the Covid inquiry, on 11 March this year, Mr Gething said: "I understood that we'd kept and maintained all the information that we should do, and it would be made available to this inquiry."