Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones has joined Reform UK, the party has announced.

The announcement of the party’s first member of the Senedd was made on Tuesday at the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells, Powys.

The annual event is Europe’s largest agricultural show and attracts thousands of visitors every year.

Laura Anne Jones was initially a member of the Senedd for the South Wales East region between 2003 and 2007, before returning in 2020.

She is the second high-profile defection from the Conservative party, after former cabinet minister David Jones joined the party earlier this month.

Reform leader Nigel Farage said the latest defection was a “big step forward for Reform UK in Wales”.

Speaking at the news conference, Ms Jones said she had been a member of the Conservative party for for 31 years but that the party was now “unrecognisable to [her]”.

She said the Conservative Party “wasn’t the party that [she] joined over three decades ago” and that she could “no longer justify” party policy on the doorstep.

Ms Jones said Wales was “a complete mess” and that she now wanted to be “part of the solution not the problem”.

Reform is still without a leader in Wales, but Ms Jones did not rule herself out of the running for that position.

The defection comes with less than a year to go until the Senedd election, when voters in Wales will elect 96 members to the Welsh parliament for the first time – an increase of more than 50%.

Recent opinion polls have shown Reform UK and Plaid Cymru vying for pole position, with Labour in third and the Conservatives in fourth.

Ms Jones said she had not notified the Conservative Party of her defection before the announcement.

The party’s Senedd leader Darren Millar said he was “disappointed” with the announcement and that Conservative members and voters would feel “very let down by her announcement”.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the latest version.

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

A former City worker is facing jail after he was found guilty of volunteering to spy for the Russians when he ran out of money in retirement.

Howard Phillips, 65, from Harlow, Essex, handed over the home address and landline for Grant Shapps, his local MP and then the defence secretary, during an undercover sting by MI5.

He told two officers posing as Russian agents he wanted to work in intelligence to avoid a “nine-to-five office” job after clearing out his savings by retiring at 59.

Phillips was found guilty of assisting what he believed to be Russian intelligence service agents, in breach of the National Security Act.

Dressed in a dark suit and dark coloured tie, he shook his head and looked around the court as he was found unanimously guilty by a jury at Winchester Crown Court after four hours of deliberation.

He now faces a lengthy jail term after offering to provide logistical support for Russian agents across the world in the increasingly desperate hope it would bail him out of his money worries.

Jocelyn Ledward KC, prosecuting, said Phillips was “struggling financially” and seeking “interesting and exciting work for easy money”.

Phillips, who is divorced with four grown-up children, became an insolvency practitioner in 1986 and had worked for Bond Partners in the City. He had become self-employed in 2011 and then worked as a manager in the charity sector before moving to GDPR compliance in “semi-retirement” in 2018.

Phillips explained that he sent out hundreds of CVs and applied online, adding: “I was avidly seeking employment but none was forthcoming.”

He filled in an online application form for MI5 in 2014 and again in 2024, because he “wanted to act in the service of my country”, but found that they required a university degree.

Phillips began writing a series of increasingly fanciful letters to Conservative Party ministers, offering his advice on how to influence the electorate, and to Hollywood actors – including Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston – asking to meet and talk about how to get into the movie business.

However, his financial situation was “decreasing rapidly”. He had used up all the money he had gained from the sale of a property. He had a balance of £25,126.09 in his bank accounts on April 29 2023 but by May 20 2024 it had dropped to £374.48 after using his savings to pay off Santander credit card bills.

Phillips was filmed from multiple angles in an elaborate undercover operation which saw two MI5 agents adopting Russian accents to pose as agents of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, even though he had never heard of the organisation.

On 15 March last year, Phillips volunteered his services to the Russians in a letter intercepted by MI5.

In messages on WhatsApp, he claimed his name was David Marshall and said he was a “fully pledged British citizen, born in the UK to British parents and British grandparents etc” and had “several situations of utmost benefit to convey and offer”.

He added that he was “semi-retired” but had “connections in high places”.

Phillips was asked if he could prepare a document on a USB stick that would explain how he could assist Russian intelligence and deliver it to London on 4 April last year.

Jurors were played a covert recording of a meeting between Phillips and “Sasha” and “Dima” – two undercover MI5 officers – at the London Bridge Hotel on 26 April in which he told the men he wanted to work for Russia in exchange for financial independence from the UK.

He was arrested by plain-clothed officers in a coffee shop near King’s Cross station on 16 May last year.

Phillips denied materially assisting a foreign intelligence service to carry out UK-related activities under the National Security Act 2023.

A nine-year-old girl was shot in the head by a motorbike-riding gunman in east London in an attempted assassination of rival gang members, a court has heard.

Ali Nasser, 43, Kenan Aydogdu, 45, and Mustafa Kiziltam, 38 – who are linked to the Hackney Turks – were sat outside the busy Evin restaurant on Kingsland High Street, Hackney, when six shots were fired at the group, a jury was told.

They were all wounded, but one of the stray bullets hit the girl, who was sitting at a table with her family members on the evening of 29 May last year, and lodged in her brain, the Old Bailey heard.

All of the victims survived the attack – which was caught on CCTV in footage described as “distressing to watch”.

But the girl needed operations to rebuild her skull with titanium and was in hospital for three months before being allowed to go home. She will have physical and cognitive difficulties for the rest of her life.

Prosecutors say the shooting was part of an ongoing dispute between the Tottenham Turks and the Hackney Turks, also known as the Bombacilars (Bombers), whose “intense rivalry” over more than a decade has seen “extreme violence” used between them.

James Mulholland KC told a jury that members of the Tottenham Turks had ordered the “planned assassination of members of a rival gang”.

Javon Riley, 33, of Farnborough, Hampshire, is on trial at the Old Bailey, where he denies four charges of attempted murder and an alternative charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent relating to the girl, who cannot be identified because of her age.

Prosecutors say Riley wasn’t a member of the Tottenham Turks but was linked to them and knew they were behind the shooting.

The gunman, who arrived on the scene on an “extremely powerful” red Ducati Monster, has not been arrested, but Riley is said to have played “a key role” before, during and after the alleged attempted murders.

He is alleged to have been “an integral part” of the plan, as he carried out reconnaissance and carried the gunman away from the scene.

The court heard that after the shooting, the gunman rode the motorbike to a nearby street where Riley was waiting in a stolen Nissan Juke on false plates before they “calmly” headed to north London before transferring into Riley’s Range Rover.

Vehicles used in the alleged plot were later torched, the court heard.

Mr Mulholland said in covert recordings in the months after the shooting, Riley talked about Izzet Eren, who is linked to the Tottenham Turks and was shot in Moldova on 10 July last year in what is believed to have been a revenge attack.

He also discussed a man called “Kem”, who prosecutors say is Kemal Eren, “one of those closely involved in the Tottenham Turks”.

“It is clear from all the evidence that Javon Riley knew this was a job for individuals connected with Tottenham Turks, the level of violence required and the aim was to kill those seated outside the restaurant and played an integral part in setting the scene so that this came about,” said Mr Mulholland.

“The only reason someone did not die that night was luck and had nothing to do with Mr Riley.”