Every donation made to pair in Labour leadership battle
More than £300,000 was raised during the campaign to be Welsh Labour leader. Welsh affairs editor Will Hayward reports on where it came from and where it went
IN TOTAL more than £300,000 of private donations were made to the two men who ran to try to become Welsh Labour leader.
Our sister paper The Western Mail has gone through every donation made to both Jeremy Miles and Vaughan Gething. It has exposed just how many businesses and private individuals have used their wealth to support each candidate.
The donations received by the two candidates were a big talking point throughout the leadership election that Mr Gething ultimately won by a narrow margin. The most controversial donation was accepted by Mr Gething who took £200,000 from a man whose companies committed environmental offences.
Exclusive polling for the Western Mail and our website Walesonline by Redfield & Wilton has suggested the public are not impressed with this.
When asked “To what extent, if at all, do you agree or disagree that Mr Gething should return the money?” the responses were:
■ 63% said “agree” or “strongly agree”;
■ 11% said “disagree or “strongly disagree”;
■ 10% said “don’t know”;
■ 17% said neither agree or disagree.
Here is a breakdown of what each candidate received from donors:
JEREMY MILES’ DONATIONS – TOTAL £58,800
■ Lancehawk – £9,000
Lancehawk is a company in wired telecommunications activities sector. Interestingly, one of the directors is a man named Robert Lovering. This man is interesting for several reasons and seemingly has a history of bankrolling politicians for both Labour and the Tories.
From 2013 to 2019 he was a director at Hydro Industries ltd, a water technology firm. Open Democracy reported that Hydro Industries was awarded a “convertible loan” from the UK Government’s Future Fund scheme in 2020, which was meant to help businesses “facing financing difficulties” due to the pandemic. In the same month, the company donated £20,000 to the Conservative Party. In
August 2021, the loan was converted into equity shares reportedly worth £3.5m.
As an aside, an analysis of the Future Fund Scheme (where the UK Government invested £1.1bn in 1,190 companies) was carried out by the FT in 2021 and found almost half of the companies that received funding are based within five miles of Whitehall.
What is also interesting about Mr Lovering is who he has shared his directorship with on the board of Hydro Industries. One of those was Welshman Guto Harri, who was an adviser and spokesman for Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London and towards the end of his time in Downing Street.
Mr Lovering is also on the boards of multiple companies with former Wales rugby captain David Pickering. One of these is R&A Properties which made a £7,500 donation to Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire Craig Williams.
■ Robert Fellows – £2,500
Mr Fellows is the COO of a PR firm called Quattro PR. They have a large range of clients including several renewable energy companies as well as the University of Manchester and Imperial College London.
■ Ian Morgan – £10,000
Ian Morgan, founder of Westacres, a high end residential property development company based in south
Wales. They sponsored Swansea City Football Club’s kit last season.
■ Elizabeth Mcavoy – £20,000
Ms Mcavoy made four £5,000 donations to Mr Miles. She is a professor of medieval literature at Swansea University who focuses on women’s literature and literary cultures, “including representations of women in both female and male authored texts”.
■ Duraseal – £14,800
Duraseal is a roofing company based in Aberdare owned by a man called Geraint Thomas Hughes.
■ Trosol – £2,500
This is a translation company based on Cathedral Road in Cardiff. It is run by a man named Rhodri Evans.
VAUGHAN GETHING’S DONATIONS – TOTAL £254,600
■ Dauson Environmental Group Ltd – £200,000
This donation has proved by far the most controversial.
The Cardiff-based environmental firm is run by a man who was prosecuted for illegally dumping waste on a conservation site. During the campaign our website Walesonline revealed that on the same day the company made a donation they also applied to build a solar farm which would require ministerial approval. This means Mr Gething’s administration will be in a position where they have to approve the application of a company that bankrolled him into his role. Mr Gething has also lobbied extensively for the company over their disagreement with Natural Resources Wales.
■ Veezu Holding Limited – £25,000
Mr Gething received £25,000 from taxi company Veezu which is owned by Welsh entrepreneur Nathan Bowles. Another company Mr Bowles has been involved in, Smart Solutions, previously made a contribution of “staff costs” worth £20,000 to Mr Gething’s leadership campaign in 2018.
Two years later in 2020, Smart Solutions Recruitment was “named and shamed” by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for failing to pay the minimum wage.
It seems like Veezu doesn’t really mind which politician or party they support as they previously employed Conservative MP and former Wales secretary Alun Cairns as a “senior adviser”.
They paid him £15,000 a year for 70 hours work for this.
■ Jeanne Marie Davies – £21,600
Ms Davies is the wife of City grandee Mervyn Davies (Baron Davies of Abersoch) who has worked for a number of major banks and served in Gordon Brown’s cabinet as a minister for trade, investment and business.
Speaking of Mr Davies ....
■ Tramshed Tech Ltd – £3,000
The Welsh company Tramshed Tech gave Mr Gething the equivalent of £3,000 in office space where he could base his campaign.
If you look up the company you can see that one of the directors is Mervyn Davies.
Tramshed is certainly not the only focus of Mr Davies who is a director in 14 other companies. The FT reported that he received a mammoth $40m last year as the Letterone’s non-executive chair.
He was made a life peer under Gordon Brown to become Baron Davies of Abersoch with the motto Trwy Fentro Mae Llwydd (by risking there is success).
■ Christopher Loyn – £5,000
Christopher Loyn is a well known architect based in Penarth. He runs Loyn + Co Architects which have designed a number of projects in south Wales.
When asked why he supported Mr Gething, Mr Loyn said: “Quite simply, Vaughan was my preferred candidate and I was delighted to hear that he had been successfully appointed as our First Minister.
“I really think he will be a breath of fresh air for Wales.”