Vaughan Gething: The vet’s son and cricket fan who’s set to become Wales’s first minister

Published

1 year ago

March 16, 2024

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Vaughan Gething has been elected leader of Welsh Labour – and is set to become the next Welsh first minister and first black leader of any European country.

Currently serving as minister for the economy, Mr Gething, 50, has been in politics since he was a teenager.

But he rose to prominence as health minister throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when, he told Sky News years later, “you had to make really difficult, big calls and go out and front them up on a daily basis”.

Mr Gething described himself during the leadership race as “experienced, engaging and ambitious”.

Mr Gething was born in Zambia, where his father, a Welsh vet, met his mother, a Zambian chicken farmer.

He has spoken in the past about experiencing prejudice, and the impact it has had on him and his family.

In the 1970s, when he was two, his family moved to Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, where his father was due to start a new job – only to find the offer withdrawn when he arrived with a black family.

The family eventually relocated to Dorset, where he was brought up.

Set to become the nation’s first black first minister, he said: “Today we turn the page in the book of our nation’s history.

“A history that we write together.”

Early career

Mr Gething studied law at Aberystwyth University and then qualified as a solicitor at Cardiff University, having also served as the president of Wales’s National Union of Students.

His passion for politics began at a young age: he joined the Labour Party at 17 to help campaign in the 1992 elections.

Before being elected to the Senedd, he worked as a researcher to former Assembly Members Val Feld and Lorraine Barrett between 1999 and 2001.

Mr Gething became the youngest ever president of the Wales Trade Union Congress in 2008.

Elected to the Senedd

He was first elected to the Senedd in 2011 as the member for Cardiff South and Penarth.

Mr Gething joined the cabinet in 2013 as deputy minister for tackling poverty, the first black cabinet minister in any of the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

He was appointed deputy minister for health in 2014, before he took on the role of health minister in 2016.

He retained the role throughout the first year of the pandemic until he was made economy minister.

The government’s COVID response is currently the subject of an ongoing public inquiry.

This was the second time he ran to become leader of the Welsh Labour Party, having stood in 2018 against Mark Drakeford.

A ‘retired’ cricketer

He is a keen cricketer but now describes himself as “largely retired”.

While cricket is his main sporting passion, Mr Gething is also a fan of rugby and football.

But he says most of his time outside of parliament is spent with his wife and young son.

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IMF raises concern over Pakistan’s Bitcoin mining power plan: report

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7 hours ago

May 31, 2025

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‘No doubt’ UK will spend 3% of GDP on defence in next parliament, defence secretary says

Published

9 hours ago

May 31, 2025

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'No doubt' UK will spend 3% of GDP on defence in next parliament, defence secretary says

There is “no doubt” the UK “will spend 3% of our GDP on defence” in the next parliament, the defence secretary has said.

John Healey’s comments come ahead of the publication of the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) on Monday.

This is an assessment of the state of the armed forces, the threats facing the UK, and the military transformation required to meet them.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously set out a “clear ambition” to raise defence spending to 3% in the next parliament “subject to economic and fiscal conditions”.

Mr Healey has now told The Times newspaper there is a “certain decade of rising defence spending” to come, adding that this commitment “allows us to plan for the long term. It allows us to deal with the pressures.”

A government source insisted the defence secretary was “expressing an opinion, which is that he has full confidence that the government will be able to deliver on its ambition”, rather than making a new commitment.

The UK currently spends 2.3% of GDP on defence, with Sir Keir announcing plans to increase that to 2.5% by 2027 in February.

This followed mounting pressure from the White House for European nations to do more to take on responsibility for their own security and the defence of Ukraine.

The 2.3% to 2.5% increase is being paid for by controversial cuts to the international aid budget, but there are big questions over where the funding for a 3% rise would be found, given the tight state of government finances.

While a commitment will help underpin the planning assumptions made in the SDR, there is of course no guarantee a Labour government would still be in power during the next parliament to have to fulfil that pledge.

A statement from the Ministry of Defence makes it clear that the official government position has not changed in line with the defence secretary’s comments.

The statement reads: “This government has announced the largest sustained increase to defence spending since the end of the Cold War – 2.5% by 2027 and 3% in the next parliament when fiscal and economic conditions allow, including an extra £5bn this financial year.

“The SDR will rightly set the vision for how that uplift will be spent, including new capabilities to put us at the leading edge of innovation in NATO, investment in our people and making defence an engine for growth across the UK – making Britain more secure at home and strong abroad.”

Sir Keir commissioned the review shortly after taking office in July 2024. It is being led by Lord Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary and NATO secretary general.

The Ministry of Defence has already trailed a number of announcements as part of the review, including plans for a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command and a £1bn battlefield system known as the Digital Targeting Web, which we’re told will “better connect armed forces weapons systems and allow battlefield decisions for targeting enemy threats to be made and executed faster”.

On Saturday, the defence secretary announced a £1.5bn investment to tackle damp, mould and make other improvements to poor quality military housing in a bid to improve recruitment and retention.

Mr Healey pledged to “turn round what has been a national scandal for decades”, with 8,000 military family homes currently unfit for habitation.

He said: “The Strategic Defence Review, in the broad, will recognise that the fact that the world is changing, threats are increasing.

“In this new era of threat, we need a new era for defence and so the Strategic Defence Review will be the vision and direction for the way that we’ve got to strengthen our armed forces to make us more secure at home, stronger abroad, but also learn the lessons from Ukraine as well.

“So an armed forces that can be more capable of innovation more quickly, stronger to deter the threats that we face and always with people at the heart of our forces… which is why the housing commitments that we make through this strategic defence review are so important for the future.”