Vaughan Gething: The vet’s son and cricket fan who’s set to become Wales’s first minister

Vaughan Gething has been elected leader of Welsh Labour, but who is the man expected to be voted in as Wales’s first minister?

The son of a Welsh vet, Mr Gething, 50, was born in Zambia and brought up in Dorset.

He is a keen cricketer but now describes himself as “largely retired”.

He studied law at Aberystwyth University and then qualified as a solicitor at Cardiff University, having also served as the president of Wales’s National Union of Students.

Before being elected to the Senedd, he worked as a researcher to former Assembly Members Val Feld and Lorraine Barrett between 1999 and 2001.

Mr Gething became the youngest ever president of the Wales Trade Union Congress in 2008.

He was first elected to the Senedd in 2011 as the member for Cardiff South and Penarth.

Mr Gething joined the cabinet in 2013 as deputy minister for tackling poverty, the first black cabinet minister in any of the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

He was appointed deputy minister for health in 2014, before he took on the role of health minister in 2016.

He retained the role throughout the first year of the pandemic until he was made economy minister, with the government’s COVID response currently the subject of an ongoing public inquiry.

If confirmed as first minister by members of the Senedd, he will become Wales’s first black first minister and the first black leader of a European country.

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While cricket is his main sporting passion, Mr Gething is also a fan of rugby and football.

But he says most of his time outside of parliament is spent with his wife and young son.

Mr Gething told Sky News in December that he is “experienced, engaging and ambitious”.