Sports minister 'didn't breach' ministerial code following comments over handling of WRU sexism row

A Welsh government minister did not set out “deliberately to mislead” in comments about her handling of allegations against the Welsh Rugby Union and did not breach the ministerial code. 

The First Minister ordered an investigation into deputy sports minister Dawn Bowden after the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi accused her of making “inaccurate statements” in a TV interview about what she knew and when. 

In November, a damning review of the WRU revealed widespread misogyny and sexism at the organisation.

Following that, the Gower MP Ms Antoniazzi said she had raised concerns with the Welsh government which hadn’t been acted upon.

But in December, Ms Bowden told BBC Wales’ Politics Wales programmes that Ms Antoniazzi had raised general concerns but not enough to oblige her to act sooner.

"What I did offer Tonia was for her to let me have the details of who it was, what the details of their complaints were, that they could provide that to me in confidence," she said.

"I would not be divulging that to anybody but it would give me the assurance that what was being said was actually real.

"That didn't materialise. I never got those. Those individuals subsequently went to the BBC but had they come to me a year earlier, and said to me 'This is me, this is my story, this is what happened', I would have been in a very different situation."

The report by the Welsh government’s director of ethics and propriety, David Richards, said: “The deputy minister should not have said in her interview that she had not been given names by the Member for Gower, since that was not correct”.

But he added: “This matter was only one of several matters dealt with in a fast-paced and wide-ranging interview. 

“She had made clear in her exchanges that she did not believe that the information provided by the Member for Gower was sufficient for her to take action, given her position as a Minister.

"This view was endorsed by the official advice which she received once a formal approach was made by the MP for Gower.”

The report goes on to state: “In my view the misstatement from the deputy minister about names does not amount to untruthfulness or constitutes a breach of the Ministerial Code. 

“I do not think that the deputy minister was deliberately trying to mislead and I think that the thrust of what the deputy minister said in her interview was an honest representation of the exchanges which she had with the Member for the Gower. 

“I think that it might also have been helpful for the deputy minister to acknowledge a bit more that the Member for the Gower, like herself, was motivated by trying to protect the women involved and to bring about cultural change in the WRU. 

“Given more time in the interview it may well have been the case that the deputy minister would have made both points. But I do not believe that the deputy minister was seeking deliberately to mislead or be untruthful in her comments and therefore that the Ministerial Code has not been breached.”

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