A prominent Conservative Party donor has sparked outrage after comments made about MP Diane Abbott emerged.
Frank Hester, who has given £10 million to the Tories in the past year, told colleagues that looking at Abbott makes you “want to hate all black women” and said the MP “should be shot” in a meeting.
He also called all his “foreign” workers together to defend himself against online claims that he had made racist remarks.
According to reports in The Guardian, he said he abhorred racism and told his team their progress would not be “based on the colour of your skin, your ethnicity, where your parents are from”.
However, he also said “we take the piss out of the fact that all our Chinese girls sit together in Asian corner”.
Hester has donated millions of pounds to the Tory Party in recent years, including a donation of £5 million in May 2023 and a further £5 million donation this month.
His healthcare firm, the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), has been paid more than £400 million by the NHS and other government bodies since 2016, primarily to look after 60 million UK medical records.
He has profited from £135 million of contracts with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in less than four years.
TPP’s lawyers said the company fostered a diverse and inclusive workplace with a significant proportion of staff from minority ethnic backgrounds, and that Hester’s comments had been distorted and taken out of context, and were not a true or accurate characterisation of the company or Hester.
The full comments made in relation to Abbott can be read below:
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