Fake news: Tories create X account to plant stories in Welsh media

Emily Price

The Conservative Senedd group has created an anonymous social media account to attack the Welsh Government and plant stories in the media, Nation.Cymru has been told. 

The ‘Waste Watch Wales’ account was launched on X in January shortly after Darren Millar took over the post of Welsh Conservative leader following a coup by MSs that brought down Andrew RT Davies.

Nation.Cymru began monitoring the anonymous account after it followed us on X.

The sock puppet account shares information obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests submitted to the Welsh Government on things like NHS spending and transport projects. 

It has been heavily critical of Wales’ anti-racist policies and diversity and inclusion spending – including funding received by the Race Council Cymru and cash spent to develop female leaders.

Waste Watch Wales’ content is regularly shared by Darren Millar and several other Tory MSs.

Its content has also been championed by several Reform UK councillors and supporters.

The account’s bio states its aim is to expose the Welsh Government’s “wasteful” spending because “taxpayers deserve full transparency”.

In February, Waste Watch Wales published a post hitting out at a “woke” exhibit on show at Cardiff National Museum.

Within two hours, the Senedd’s Conservative group office sent us a press release claiming that, “concerns have been raised over the National Museum in Cardiff spending taxpayers’ money on ‘woke exhibitions'”

The press release included a link to Waste Watch Wales’ X post.

Culture wars

We noticed that the post had been re-shared by only two accounts – the Welsh Conservatives’ official X account and Darren Millar’s Chief of Staff, David TC Davies.

The Tory press release also included the same three pictures posted to X by Waste Watch Wales.

We checked through the account and noticed that the first ever post announcing its launch was re-posted immediately by the official Welsh Conservative X account.

Nation.Cymru also noted that the Waste Watch Wales account appeared to be favouring the same stock images of Welsh ministers that are regularly used by the Welsh Conservatives on the group’s social media channels.

Faceless

Several Tory sources later told to us that Waste Watch Wales was being run by the Welsh Conservatives themselves under the supervision of former Welsh Secretary, David TC Davies.

One Conservative insider lambasted the account saying they felt that some of the content being posted was “the same culture war nonsense” that the former Welsh Secretary had championed when he was a Member of Parliament.

David TC Davies lost his seat in the general election last year along with all of Wales’ Conservative MPs.

Another Conservative source told us that the anonymity of the account allowed the Welsh Conservatives to be “a little more mischievous” with the sort of FOIs they submitted to the Welsh Government.

We made the Welsh Government aware of our findings.

Labour backbencher and former Welsh Government minister Lee Waters said: “I’m not sure why having led a General Election campaign, which led to a loss of every single one of their seats, the Tory Senedd Members think the political savvy of David TC Davies is worth listening to.

“And the irony is clearly lost on him that spending his tax-payer funded time on submitting costly FOI requests to feed a social media account with 900 followers is a sterling example of wasteful spending.”

We asked the Welsh Conservative Senedd group office a number of questions:

*Why are you using an anonymous account from within the Senedd to share information deceptively?

*Why not just post directly to the Welsh Conservatives official social media channels?

*Why don’t you want anyone to know that Waste Watch Wales is being run by the Welsh Conservatives?

*The bio of the Waste Watch Wales account states that “taxpayers deserve full transparency” – Do you think it’s transparent for a the Welsh Conservatives to use a nameless social media account to plant stories in the press?

Anonymous

A Welsh Conservative spokesperson said: “Waste Watch Wales is not an official Conservative Party Account, and is not run by the Group Office.”

We told the Tory group office that we had spoken to several Conservative insiders who say that they have been told directly that the account was being run by the Welsh Conservatives.

We asked the Tory group office:

*Can you please confirm that the group office has no knowledge of who is running or contributing to the Waste Watch Wales account and that it is not being run by any Conservative staffer or MS, and that David TC Davies has never had any input in it nor has any knowledge of who contributes to it?

A Welsh Conservative spokesperson said: “David TC Davies does not run the Waste Watch Wales account, but many people know who does and that person wishes to remain anonymous.

“The X account does good work holding the Welsh Government to account.”

The Welsh Government was invited to comment.