Publication denies Hannah Blythyn was the source of its Welsh First Minister leak story
The former Welsh government cabinet minister has repeatedly said she isn't the source of a leak concerning Vaughan Gething
Last updated 12th Jul 2024
The publication that first broke the news about Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething deleting a pandemic-era iMessage chat says Hannah Blythyn was not the source of its story.
Nation Cymru's made the news public following the First Minister's comments in the Senedd on Wednesday night.
Gething reiterated that Hannah Blythyn was the source of the leak - something she's always denied.
A motion asking for evidence to be published has been tabled by the Tories for next week.
Full Nation Cymru statement
Chief Executive Mark Mansfield said: “Protecting sources is very important for all journalists and we take that responsibility extremely seriously. It is important that whistleblowers can rest assured that their identity will not be disclosed by any news outlet to whom they reveal important matters of public interest. As a rule it follows that we will not enter into public debate about who may have been the source of stories we have published.
“Events of this week have, however, prompted us to consider carefully the implications of Hannah Blythyn’s personal statement to the Senedd on Tuesday and Vaughan Gething’s response to it on Wednesday.
He added:“We remain totally committed to protecting our sources. However, in this unprecedented situation, the board of NationCymru does not consider we can stand by and see Ms Blythyn’s reputation unjustly besmirched by the First Minister.
“No one who witnessed Ms Blythyn making her statement in the Senedd could fail to be aware of the immense impact her dismissal as a minister has had on her wellbeing. Her distress has undoubtedly been compounded by the fact that no proper investigation took place before she was dismissed. Instead the First Minister decided to by-pass due process and find her summarily guilty of leaking information to NationCymru.
“Given the strong public interest and importance of this story and out of concern for Hannah Blythyn’s wellbeing, we have decided that the right thing to do is to state publicly that she was not the source of our story and that at no stage before or since publication of it have we had any contact with her about it.
“We can state unequivocally that Mr Gething is not telling the truth when he suggests that he has incontrovertible evidence that Ms Blythyn was our source.
“We also think it important to remind everyone that the story we published revealed that Mr Gething, when Health Minister, told ministerial colleagues that he was deleting iMessages from a group chat because they “could be captured in an FOI”. We believe he has been involved in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that these were Welsh Government iMessages by suggesting that they related to a discussion that had taken place in the Labour Senedd group.
“If the messages had related to a party meeting of any kind they would not have been susceptible to capture by FOI. As Mr Gething must have known, they could be captured by FoI only because they were ‘Welsh Government’ iMessages.
“Similarly, there has been an attempt to suggest that the messages on the screenshot that was passed to us related to no more than banter relating to Mike Hedges, a non-ministerial member of the Senedd Labour group.
“In fact, Mr Gething’s own words in the ‘leaked’ messages confirm that the discussion related to more than that. He stated: ‘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’. As we have reported previously, the “choice being made” was the decision to base GCSE and A-level results on teachers’ assessments because students had been unable to sit exams because of Covid restrictions. There had been uproar about an earlier decision to base results on an algorithm.
“The fact that the discussion related to a ministerial decision about the handling of Covid meant that the iMessages constituted Welsh Government business. Ministers were already under an obligation to preserve such messages because they were subject to FOI disclosure. Subsequently, they should have been disclosed to the UK Covid Inquiry.
“Whoever passed us the screenshot was performing a public service. The messages should have been in the public domain anyway.
“Mr Gething’s admission that he was deleting messages conflicts with what he in due course told the Inquiry, which was that messages had been deleted from his mobile phone not by him but when it was being ‘refitted’ by the Senedd’s IT department.
“Hannah Blythyn has behaved with integrity. Vaughan Gething has not.”