WHO IS VAUGHAN GETHING?

THE 50-year-old is Labour’s Cardiff South and Penarth Senedd Member. He was most recently economy minister and was the health minister during the Covid pandemic.

He was born in Zambia, where his father, a vet from Ogmoreby-Sea, met his Zambian mother. When he was two, they moved to Monmouthshire.

The family moved to Dorset when he was six, which is where he was brought up.

He studied at Beaminster Comprehensive and Sixth Form in Dorset.

He read law at Aberystwyth University, graduating in 1999, before going on to University of Cardiff Law School.

He was president of Aberystwyth University Guild of Students and the first black president of the National Union of Students Wales.

Before his political career, he was a solicitor and former partner at Thompsons and was the youngest ever president of the TUC in

Wales. He has previously served as a county councillor and school governor.

He has also been a community service volunteer, supporting and caring for a student with cerebral palsy.

He lives in Penarth and is married to Michelle and they have a son.

He joined the Labour Party at 17 and unsuccessfully stood in mid and west Wales in the first Assembly elections.

Between 1999 and 2001, he was a researcher to former Assembly Members Val Feld and Lorraine Barrett. He was also the chair of Right to Vote, a cross-party project to encourage greater participation from black minority ethnic communities in Welsh public life.

He was councillor for Butetown between 2004 and 2008, having been elected with a majority of two votes. He was selected to the Senedd for the first time in 2011.

Then first minister Carwyn Jones made him deputy minister for tackling poverty in 2013. Since then, he has been health minister and economy minister.

He also stood in the 2018 Labour leadership contest, coming second to eventual winner Mark Drakeford.

His first pledge as first minister is for an NHS covenant which he said was inspired by his own health battle with kidney disease when he was 19.