Vaughan Gething confident he will win confidence vote

Wales’ First Minister Vaughan Gething has said he is “confident” that he will win Wednesday’s vote on his leadership.

The Conservatives have forced a vote of no confidence in the Senedd after weeks of rows about the Welsh Labour leader’s campaign donations.

Mr Gething told the Senedd the vote was “non-binding” and denied such a vote was rare.

Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth said the vote should be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, the Welsh Tories accused Mr Gething of tying himself in knots over donations from a company owned by a man previously convicted of environmental offences.

The first minister told the Senedd his campaign “undertook all the due diligence we were required to”.

It comes after a BBC Wales documentary said Mr Gething had received the money from Dauson Environmental Group at a time a subsidiary was under criminal investigation.

Mr Gething told Senedd members it would have been “improper and inappropriate for me to know about an investigation, whether undertaken by a regulator or any other authority”.

If Wednesday’s vote was successful it will not bring down Vaughan Gething’s leadership automatically, although it would likely raise questions about his authority and cause political damage.

For the opposition to win, at least one Labour Senedd member would need to abstain, vote against or simply not show up.

Despite the rift in the group that has developed since Mr Gething became leader, it would be a shock if any Labour member rebelled.

In the first first minister’s questions since the general election was called, Mr Gething told Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies that the Tories had put forward a “motion tomorrow, a non-binding vote, but a vote nonetheless in this Parliament”.

“I am confident about tomorrow. I look forward to the debate which I will attend,” he said.

Mr Gething said he “could and should, in my view, have been elsewhere” – that is likely to be a reference to the D-day commemoration in Portsmouth that he cannot attend because of the debate.

The exchange led Mr ap Iorwerth to suggest to Mr Gething that he was signalling “his attitude towards the vote of no confidence in saying that it is non-binding”.

“I think we should take it seriously, and it’s a rare for the Senedd to hold votes of no confidence, especially in the first minister.”

Mr Gething said: “I understand the member wants to make an alternative case that, regardless of not breaking rules, that I should nevertheless suffer the ultimate price in political terms.

“The idea that votes of no confidence are not commonplace – it’s just not borne out by any cursory examination of the record.

“There have been three votes of no confidence within this Senedd term. Every health minister has faced a vote of no confidence at some point in time.”

The last confidence vote in the first minister was held into Alun Michael, in 2000.

Mr Michael, whose post was known as first secretary at the time, resigned before it could take place.

Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Andrew RT Davies raised with Mr Gething the Wales Investigates programme from Monday.

He asked when Mr Gething knew that the company was under investigation. Mr Gething said: “This is an area where it would be wholly improper or inappropriate for me to know about the investigation that the BBC reported on.

“That’s when I was first aware of it, when it was reported on.”

Mr Davies pushed him on what due diligence was done.

Mr Gething added: “We undertook all the due diligence we were required to, that’s exactly what happened.

“Even the BBC programme could not find an instance where any of the rules had been broken.”

“You knew that this businessman had two criminal convictions against him, the owner of this company,” Mr Davies added.

“Yet you were not prepared to ask the searching questions, you were just prepared to bank the money and run.”