QUESTIONS about campaign donations to Welsh Labour leader Vaughan Gething and his personal integrity bedevilled his second session of First Minister’s Questions today.

Both Welsh Conservative opposition leader Andrew Davies and co-operation agreement partner Plaid Cymru’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth used all their questions to press Mr Gething to appoint an independent investigator into his campaign finances. 

Mr Gething told the Senedd that Labour’s Welsh executive had agreed at the weekend that former first minister Carwyn Jones would chair a review of leadership campaigns, including finances.

The First Minister’s successful bid for the party’s leadership was overshadowed after he took £200,000 from a firm owned by a man previously convicted of environmental offences.

It emerged at the weekend that the company had also received a business loan of £400,000 from the Development Bank of Wales, which the Welsh government owns. 

Mr Gething said that Ms Jones’s review will report back to the chief executive of Welsh Labour in September.

Sources in Welsh Labour have said that Stewart Owadally, who had run Mr Gething’s leadership campaign, was likely to be appointed the party’s general secretary as a campaign reward.

Mr ap Iorwerth said there had been a clear breach of the ministerial code as there was a perception that the donation was wrong and said that Mr Jones had called the donation “unfortunate” and said “there were lessons to learn for Mr Gething.”

Mr ap Iorwerth asked whether Mr Jones’s investigation would be put into the public domain, but Mr Gething said that would be a matter for the party’s Welsh executive to determine.