Wales’s health minister, Vaughan Gething, has learned the hard way about one of the risks of videoconferencing after he accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about one of his colleagues during a virtual session of Welsh assembly. Having apparently left his microphone live after addressing the assembly, the minister could be heard loudly decrying his fellow Labour assembly member Jenny Rathbone. “What the fuck is the matter with her?” he said, before complaining about Rathbone’s questions in an earlier part of the session, which was held via Zoom. Elin Jones, the assembly’s llywydd – equivalent to speaker – attempted to rescue the situation as Gething continued his rant. “I think Vaughan Gething needs to turn his microphone off,” she said, to no avail. “Vaughan Gething needs to turn his microphone off,” she repeated more forcefully, before the virtual hearing was cut off. Assembly members on the call could be seen reacting with shock and laughter. Afterwards, the opposition party Plaid Cymru called for Gething to resign.
Hours earlier, the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, had singled out Gething for criticism over the Welsh government’s handling of the pandemic. At Westminster, parliament hosted its first hybrid session on Wednesday, with prime minister’s questions taking place with a handful of MPs in the Commons and many more dialling in from their homes. During a hearing of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, a Labour MP’s attempt to berate the government for failing to roll out superfast broadband was cut short when her own broadband failed. Julie Elliott was pressing the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, on whether the government was doing enough to support households that could not access online resources for education, work or healthcare advice when her questioning was cut short. “You mentioned superfast broadbaaaaaannddd,” Elliott said, as the connection faltered. “Bane of my life at the minute.”
“I am personally struggling, as are people in Sunderland, and I’m sure across the country,” she continued before the connection froze entirely, leaving a bemused Julian Knight, the committee’s chair, muttering about the irony. A second attempt to ask the same question failed, and Dowden agreed to address the main problems of broadband provision. “I would resist saying you had timed it to demonstrate the challenges with your broadband,” he said.