Senedd Rules Conservative Leader’s 20mph Tweet Brought Parliament Into Disrepute

The Senedd’s Conservative leader has been found to have discredited the Welsh Parliament through a social media post describing Wales’ 20mph speed limit as a “blanket” policy. Andrew RT Davies maintained that his phrasing was “a matter of opinion,” but he is scheduled to receive an official reprimand in Cardiff Bay next week. Douglas Bain, the Senedd’s standards commissioner, stated that as “leader of the Welsh Conservatives and a former experienced member of the Standards of Conduct Committee it was incumbent of the member to set a good example.” The Welsh government has consistently asserted that the “blanket” characterization is inaccurate, given that the default limit, which was formerly 30mph, allows for exemptions. Mr. Bain received two distinct complaints concerning Andrew RT Davies’s use of the phrase on social media. The tweet, which was published following the Senedd’s Standards of Conduct Committee’s determination that the term “blanket” was “imprecise and inaccurate,” stated: “Another bus route cut thanks to Labour and Plaid’s blanket 20mph speed limits.” The commissioner assessed whether Davies had violated these rules from the code of conduct: ▪ Rule 1 – Members must uphold the overarching principles. ▪ Rule 2 – Members must act truthfully. ▪ Rule 3 – Members must not act or behave in a manner that brings the Senedd, or its Members generally, into disrepute. The cross-party standards committee concurred with the commissioner’s determination that Davies infringed rules 1 and 3, but not rule 2, as the commissioner had concluded “there was no intention to deceive.” The committee stated that it “considers a breach of the code of conduct by any member of the Senedd to be a serious matter,” adding, “The reputation of the Senedd as an institution, and the public’s trust and confidence in it, rely upon members demonstrating integrity and leadership through their actions.” Davies is scheduled to be censured by the Senedd on Wednesday afternoon; this constitutes an official reprimand, effectively a rebuke without additional repercussions. This report marks the first issued by the Standards of Conduct Committee since Hannah Blythyn assumed the role of chair. She previously served as a Labour minister until her dismissal by then-First Minister Vaughan Gething, who had claimed she was the origin of a story disclosing that he informed ministers he was deleting messages from a group chat dating back to the pandemic era. Blythyn denied the accusation of leaking information. Natasha Asghar, a colleague of Davies, has also received an official reprimand for referring to the 20mph speed limit as a “blanket” policy. In a distinct report, the standards committee has advised the Senedd that Davies violated the code of conduct regarding a separate issue, “but no further action is required.” The standards commissioner received a complaint concerning a tweet posted by Davies that read: “Vaughan Gething’s Labour government is embracing the same extreme ideology as its predecessor. Nothing has changed.” Davies included in his tweet an image from the Guido Fawkes website depicting Gething — then the first minister — and a pregnant woman, accompanied by the text “Welsh Government press release celebrates ‘birthing people.’ Wales makes womb for ‘birthing people.’ ” The committee noted that the complainant regarded this tweet as “a blatant lie,” “misleading and dangerous.” The commissioner reported that the statement issued by the health secretary on 26 April 2024 did not “celebrate the arrangements for women and birthing people.” This statement, instead of being a press release distributed directly to journalists, had in fact quoted from a Health Inspectorate Wales report. That document, not the Welsh government itself, had affirmed that “staff at all levels in the service work hard to provide a good experience and that sufficient arrangements are in place to provide safe and effective care to women and birthing people.” The committee further noted Davies’s assertion that “although he had personally composed and posted the tweet, he had not written the text copied from the article published in Guido Fawkes.” Nevertheless, the committee concurred with the commissioner’s finding that this was “irrelevant” and that “members are fully responsible for any quotation they choose to include in a tweet in the same way as they are responsible for anything they retweet or any tweet that they like.” The committee agreed that Davies did “not carry out sufficient due diligence before posting his comments.” However, it concluded, “although we consider the member is in breach of the Code of Conduct, we do not consider that any further action is warranted.”