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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Matthew Weaver

Leeds Pride ends sponsorship deal with Frank Hester’s company TPP

Frank Hester talking into a microphone
Frank Hester’s company first sponsored Leeds Pride in 2017, in an effort, he said, to ‘celebrate the diversity that exists in our local community’. Photograph: CHOGM Rwanda 2022/YouTube/PA

The health tech company owned by the Conservative party donor Frank Hester has been dropped as a sponsor from Leeds Pride after his remarks about Diane Abbott were widely condemned as racist and misogynistic.

Last month the Guardian revealed that during a meeting in 2019 Hester had said Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP, made you “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”. These comments are now the subject of an investigation by West Yorkshire police.

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