A Welsh councillor being investigated over his handling of a child protection case has failed to offer evidence that he has child protection qualifications, after claiming he had been trained in the field.
Neil McEvoy contacted Researching Reform after reading a piece we wrote on a child protection case he had taken on, claiming that the report contained several factual inaccuracies.
This site offered to amend its original report upon Mr McEvoy furnishing the site with evidence.
Mr McEvoy told this site in a message exchange on Facebook that we were wrong in suggesting that he had no child protection training, and that he had not offered evidence of Welsh Women’s Aid encouraging women to breach court orders involving contact with fathers, or other women’s groups who he claimed had done the same.
He also said that he had not been removed from the party for bullying members as both this site and the BBC reported, but was expelled “for not discouraging people clapping me into a conference.”
Mr McEvoy did not send any evidence to this site about his claims in relation to Welsh Women’s Aid, or other women’s groups, and failed to offer any documentary evidence to confirm his alleged child protection qualifications.
We also asked McEvoy to explain his opposition to a Welsh Bill banning all forms of corporal punishment against children. McEvoy declined to comment.
While the site has received an expulsion letter written to Mr McEvoy by the Welsh Party Hearing Panel, the letter does not say that the Assembly Member was expelled for preventing people from clapping for him. There is no mention of clapping in the letter.
The letter says that McEvoy was expelled for “actions or statements, damaging or potentially damaging the public reputation of the party”, breaches of confidentiality and a series of tweets which Mr McEvoy posted after being found guilty of bullying by a disciplinary panel at the Local Government Ombudsman.
According to a report by the BBC in March 2018, the Welsh Party Panel also issued a statement about the councillor’s hearing, which said that the Panel “found him guilty of conduct in party meetings or against party members during party-organised events, or in correspondence dealing with party business, that was intimidating, harassing or that caused distress or disillusionment among party members and/or staff.”
The Assembly Member is now being investigated by the Standards & Ethics Committee at Cardiff Council, where he is a councillor, amid claims that he bullied care home staff while woking on a child protection case. McEvoy denies the allegations.
In 2011, Neil McEvoy accused Welsh Women’s Aid of “publicly funded child abuse”, claiming the group helped women break court orders involving fathers’ access to children, in a series of tweets he sent out on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
McEvoy apologised for his outburst shortly before he was suspended from the party saying:
“I apologise for any offence caused and accept I should have used less emotional language than the words I used.”
“I regret letting my emotional baggage of being a father who has experienced what, I believe, are the inadequacies of the family law system to guide my political actions.”
He added, “I particularly regret that the tweeting of comments – originally made 18 months ago – on this sensitive day have allowed the matter to become more about me than the issue itself.”
