Vaughan Gething: Leaked texts sent to Covid-19 inquiry

The iMessage platform displays the initials of other participants of a group chat at the top of a screen, but not the initials of the person whose phone it is.

In a statement released shortly before he announced he would quit as first minister, Mr Gething said that it could be seen that the only missing initials on the image were from the former minister for social partnership, Ms Blythyn, by comparing the membership of the chat on the different copies.

“It is also clear that the image was captured in 2020 and was retained before the leak became evident earlier this year,” he said.

Mr Gething said in the group chat: “I’m 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.”

Julie James – the former local government secretary who was one of the four individuals who quit Mr Gething’s government forcing him to resign – appeared to agree with Mr Gething.

“Good point Vaughan,” she could be seen to say in the second unredacted screengrab.

At the Covid inquiry, on 11 March this year, Mr Gething said: “I understood that we’d kept and maintained all the information that we should do, and it would be made available to this inquiry.”