Minister sorry for 'offensive' tweet about Tories
A senior Welsh government politician has apologised and been formally reprimanded for tweeting “Tories so happy to see people and particularly children killed and injured on our roads".
The Senedd's standards committee had recommended that Counsel General Mick Antoniw should be censured by the Welsh Parliament for his comments, made during an angry online row with the Conservatives over the introduction of Wales' default 20mph speed limit.
Mr Antoniw, the Labour government's top legal advisor, told the Senedd, "I don’t disagree with the report. I acknowledge the contents of it and it contains my apology, which I repeat today".
Standards committee chair Vikki Howells thanked the Senedd member for Pontypridd "for the positive and respectful way in which he has engaged with the committee and with the standards process".
She also took the opportunity to "highlight to all members the importance of treating interactions on social media in accordance with the same principles that would be applied to face-to-face interaction".
On 16 September last year Mr Antoniw posted on his X account: “Tories so happy to see people and particularly children killed and injured on our roads. Wholly irresponsible but not surprising.”
He was responding to a post by the leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd, Andrew R T Davies, which included a picture of a newspaper front page calling the 20mph default speed limit on most restricted roads “insane".
Mr Davies' Tory colleague, Natasha Asghar MS, complained to the Standards of Conduct Committee that the tweet was "wholly inappropriate,… deeply offensive and completely unnecessary" and in breach of Senedd members' Code of Conduct.
In his report, Standards Commissioner Douglas Bain says that "offensive comments of that kind about a large section of the electorate are not only offensive but could bring the Senedd into disrepute".
"In making them the member, who is a senior politician, set a very poor example, and demonstrated a lack of judgement and leadership...”
The standards committee "agreed with the commissioner’s characterisation of the comments and their ramifications".
Mr Antoniw told the commissioner that by using the term "happy'" he "intended to mean the Welsh Conservatives generically (it was not directed at any individual) were content to oppose a policy which had the objective of saving lives".
"I did not use ‘happy’ in the sense that anyone would be personally take pleasure from seeing children injured or killed on our roads," he said.
During First Minister's Questions, the week after the tweet was posted, Andrew RT Davies asked the then first minister Mark Drakeford whether he agreed it was "unacceptable language to use when trying to engage in a policy position that we have a disagreement over".
Mr Drakeford replied "the counsel general took the tweet down immediately and has since acknowledged that he would not have expressed it in that way had he been in a position to give it further consideration".
A censure is a formal reprimand which registers the Senedd's disapproval of a member's behaviour, but does not result in further action.
Several Senedd members have banned for short periods of time over their conduct, including Rhys ab Owen who was found to have inappropriately touched and swore at two women while drunk on a night out; Rhianon Passmore after failing to give a breath test, and Michelle Brown for a racial slur.
