Reform MS accused of plagiarising work of Tory councillors

Emily Price

Reform UK’s only Senedd Member has been accused of passing off the work of Conservative councillors in Monmouthshire as her own.

During an amber danger to life weather warning issued by the Met Office on Monday (December 2) the Monmouthshire Tories published a number of social media posts collating information from a variety of sources to keep residents updated.

At 7:30am, county councillor for Mitchel Troy and Trellech, and leader of the Monmouthshire Tories, Richard John, published a post to a community Facebook group which included information on the latest flood alerts and how to obtain sandbags.

Cllr John wrote: “The Met Office has declared an amber weather warning and is predicting heavy rainfall to continue today until almost midnight this evening.

“Two flood warnings have been issued by Natural Resources Wales so far in the Vale of Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire.

“No flooding warnings have been issued by NRW for Monmouthshire at present and river levels on the Monnow, Wye and Trothy are at normal levels.

“The M48 Severn Bridge is closed in both directions and will remain closed all day. We are not aware of any other road closures.

“MCC has restocked supplies of sandbags but has issued a warning that in a rural county of over 40,000 properties, it may not be possible to provide sandbags to all those who need them so residents are advised to source their own if their property or business is at high risk of flooding.

“MCC is strongly advising residents who might need sandbags to source them from builders’ merchants.”

Shortly after 9:00AM, South Wales East MS Laura Anne Jones published her own post to X.

Some of the paragraphs had identical wording to that of the alerts issued by the Monmouthshire Conservatives.

In the comments section beneath Jones’ post, the leader of the Monmouthshire Tories shared screen grabs comparing the two similar updates and accused his former colleague, who defected to Reform during the summer, of “plagiarism”.

Cllr John wrote: “Do you think you should credit Welsh Conservative councillors in your posts? #plagiarism”

Jones branded the Tory councillor a “glory hunter” adding that she had taken the information from a WhatsApp group chat.

Responding to Cllr John on X, she wrote: “I took some of the info from a post in the Wyesham WhatsApp group that I set up during Covid as it happens, the kind lady who posted it for the group, had just copied and pasted the info.

“Didn’t know where it had come from – but of course, thank you.

“More important that the info is out there to people who need it wouldn’t you say – whoever it’s come from. #gloryhunter”

Cllr John told Nation.Cymru: “My ward colleague Jayne McKenna and I regularly receive positive feedback from residents about how useful our Facebook updates are.

“In times of crisis, we dedicate hours both in the ward and online to source accurate, practical information for our community.

“During the recent flooding in Monmouth, thousands of residents visited our page for reliable updates on road closures, council services and river levels.

“Given the time and effort we put in, it’s frustrating to see Reform politicians simply copying our work and presenting it as their own.

“When we had a by-election in Monmouth, Reform were here in numbers, but during the recent floods, they’ve done nothing to support residents, unlike Conservative, Labour and Independent councillors, who, to be fair, have all pitched in.

“If Reform genuinely wanted to keep the public informed, they could have shared our posts rather than plagiarising them.

“This is typical Reform behaviour – all show but no support when the community needs it most.”