Vaughan Gething helped donor's waste offence company

Vaughan Gething lobbied regulators in favour of a company that has been prosecuted for waste crimes and whose owner has since given him money, BBC Wales has learned.

The Welsh Labour leadership candidate asked Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to ease restrictions on Atlantic Recycling in 2016.

Its holding company recently donated £200,000 to Mr Gething's campaign.

The economy minister defended the correspondence.

Mr Gething said it was "routine practice" for elected politicians to correspond with a range of public bodies regarding constituency issues.

The minister is standing against Jeremy Miles in the race to be the next first minister. Voting ends on Thursday and the result is due to be declared on Saturday.

Atlantic Recycling and its director David Neal were prosecuted in 2013 for illegally dumping waste on the Gwent Levels, and in 2017 for failing to clean the waste up.

Mr Neal was fined £10,000 and given a three month suspended sentence in 2013, and was handed an 18 week suspended sentence in 2017, together with fines and costs of £230,000.

NRW has now revealed that, in 2016, Mr Gething wrote to the regulator asking it to reconsider a notice ordering work to be suspended on the site, accusing it of having a "closed mind".

He raised concerns about public money being spent on disputes with the company. He followed his letter up with a meeting, an email and another letter.

In 2018, in a further letter, he told NRW officials they were unjustified in delaying a decision regarding a permit.

Later that year, companies linked to David Neal donated £38,000 to Mr Gething's previous leadership campaign, in addition to the more recent donations of £200,000 from Mr Neal's Dauson Environmental Group.

The Member of the Senedd (MS) for Cardiff South and Penarth, whose constituency is home to Atlantic Recycling's Cardiff base, was a Welsh government minister through the whole period. NRW is funded by the Welsh government.

A Labour source said there was a "real sense of anger" in the party over the whole donation issue.

Meanwhile former Welsh government minister, Leighton Andrews, said the donations were damaging devolution.

The correspondence from Mr Gething to NRW was released following a BBC Wales request for the documents under a law called the environmental information regulations.

It is different to and predates the Freedom of Information Act, and allows members of the public and the press to obtain information about decisions relating to the environment.

Mr Gething's letter of March 2016 concerns a suspension notice imposed on Atlantic Recycling, which the MS said prevented the company from trading.

Public records show that such a notice was imposed in late 2015. The notice warned of the potential for waste spontaneously combusting, and ordered waste older than six months to be removed.

Much of the waste on the site in Rumney had been stored "in excess of three years and in some areas up to five years", the notice said.

Mr Gething wrote to a senior official at NRW, saying he was contacting them in his capacity as a constituency assembly member for Cardiff South and Penarth.

"Having read a series of meetings minutes I am concerned at the apparent unwillingness to engage with the company after the [suspension] notice was issued," Mr Gething wrote.

"It appears that broadly NRW has a closed mind when it comes to achieving the requirements of the notice to improve the site, reduce a range of risks and remove older material.

"It appears that the only approach being taken by your colleagues is to insist that no trading takes place, no discussion about an alternative plan to achieve the notice requirements and the only way to change this is through legal action."

He said it was "troubling" that "significant amounts of private and public finance" had been spent in a series of disputes, and said the company's future will impact on the "jobs of a number of my constituents".

Pressing for an alternative, he warned NRW that if the company ceased to function then enforcement action against the landowner "is unlikely to be quick or cheap".

"I am keen to avoid further expensive conflict involving competing sets of lawyers," he added.

The letter makes clear he had also had a conversation with the official involved.

In April, Mr Gething wrote an email to NRW officials referring to a meeting he had with the organisation on 15 March.

Discussing a "contract offer" to remove older materials from Atlantic's site, Mr Gething wrote: "The NRW response to date is disappointing.

"The tone does not suggest that there has been any change in the nature of the conversation and approach from NRW."

In a further letter in May 2016, Mr Gething requested to be told the outcome of a meeting between NRW and Atlantic recycling, scheduled for a few days after the letter was written.

Documents on NRW's website show that, in June 2016 and following discussions with the company, the suspension notice was withdrawn, and a new order was imposed which concerned one field of the site, rather than all of it.

NRW said no suspension notice currently applies at Atlantic Recycling, which it says has had a "long regulatory history".

Two years later, in May 2018, Mr Gething wrote again about the company, regarding a delay to a variation of a permit the company held, so it could include a water treatment and biomass boiler.

The application had been submitted on 25 April 2017.

Mr Gething wrote: "I can understand a delay until the court case was concluded. However I am not sure how further delay can be justified. I do however appreciate that your own resources are pressured after eight years of financial austerity."

In response to the story a Labour MP, who did not wish to be named, said: "This just isn't going away. He's certainly got questions he needs to answer."

A separate Labour source said: "Everyone is furious. There is a real sense of anger about this."

Former Welsh government minister Leighton Andrews called for Mr Gething's campaign to return the £200,000 donation.

"I think people feel very strongly" about news of Mr Gething's correspondence on behalf of one of David Neal's companies, he said, "not because necessarily technically any rules have been broken, but I think it's the kind of signal it sends about Welsh Labour and about devolution".

Professor Andrews, who lost his seat at the 2016 election and is not currently a member of the party, added: "We always campaigned for devolution in the 1990s on the basis that we could have a more transparent and open system here in Wales; that we wanted to get away from the sleaze stories that were engulfing Westminster at the time.

"This causes damage to the image of Welsh Labour and it causes damage to the image of devolution as well."

A spokesperson for Vaughan Gething said: "It is routine practice for Members of Senedd, including government ministers, to correspond with a range of public bodies regarding constituency issues. This is an important function of elected representatives, especially when jobs are at risk.

"In his role as a constituency MS, Vaughan engaged with both Atlantic Recycling and NRW. The business and NRW agreed a way forward to both correct environmental regulatory compliance issues identified by NRW and protect over 60 jobs in the constituency.

"All donations are declared to the Senedd and Electoral Commission in line with the rules and Vaughan's commitment to transparency. It is a matter of public record that ministers are not able to take decisions on matters that are specific to their constituency, in line with the ministerial code."

A spokesperson for NRW said that Mr Gething's interventions had no impact on its decision making.

They said: "Receiving correspondence from elected representatives is not uncommon. We deal with any correspondence of this type in line with our regulatory principles and approach."

David Neal said: "As a Welsh company, the Dauson Environmental Group has a wide number of operations and assets and is committed to investing in the future of Wales.

"We want to see the economy, communities, and environment continue to prosper in Wales, and we have supported Vaughan Gething's campaign as we feel he is the best person for the job."

Additional reporting by Shelley Phelps and Gareth Lewis.