Major Conservative party donor Frank Hester has apologised after his comments about MP Diane Abbott.
Hester gave the Conservatives a £5 million donation in May 2023. The Guardian reported that he announced this month a further £5m donation, which had been accepted by the party from his company in November last year.
The Tories are now facing pressure to return the cash from their “biggest ever donor” amid the storm created by his alleged remarks to Ms Abbott.
But who is Mr Hester and what did he say?
Who is Frank Hester?
Mr Hester, 58, is a British businessman who founded and serves as CEO of the software company the Phoenix Partnership (TPP). He grew up in Armley, a district in the west of Leeds, West Yorkshire.
He has an estimated net worth of £415 million, according to the Sunday Times rich list. He was awarded an OBE for “services to health care” in the 2015 New Year Honours List.
What is the Phoenix Partnership?
The Phoenix Partnership is a Leeds-based healthcare technology company. It specialises in developing electronic health records (EHR) systems and other software solutions for healthcare providers.
TPP's flagship product is SystmOne, a comprehensive EHR system used widely in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) and other healthcare organisations globally.
Hester came up with the idea for TPP with a friend from university. He started developing the company's software in 2005.
SystmOne gives roughly 2,700 general practitioners in England access to computerised digital health records. This was achieved gradually throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
The service has proven to be very profitable. According to Companies House records, TPP had a £40m profit before taxes and an £80m turnover in the year ending in March 2023.
What did Frank Hester say about Diane Abbott?
The Guardian reported that in March 2024, Mr Hester had said that Ms Abbott "should be shot" and "makes you want to hate all black women".
In a different meeting that year, Mr Hester also allegedly gathered "foreign" employees from his company and said: "We take the piss out of the fact that all our Chinese girls sit together in Asian corner.”
A TPP statement said Mr Hester "accepts that he was rude about Diane Abbott in a private meeting several years ago, but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender or colour of skin".
How has the Tory party responded?
“Mr Hester has made clear that while he was rude, his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor the colour of her skin,” said a Conservative spokeswoman.
“He has since apologised.”
Ex-Tory leader William Hague condemned Mr Hester’s alleged outburst as “racist,” a word the Tory party was declining to use.
The ex-prime minister’s Theresa May's former No 10 chief of staff and Tory peer Lord Barwell criticised the party's handling of the furore.
This is an absurd line. First Hester didn't offer any "criticism" of Diane Abbott's views; he described his reaction to seeing her on TV. And second what he said clearly had something to do with her gender and the colour of her skin because he referenced both of them https://t.co/2j84WnU2dw
— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) March 12, 2024
He posted on X, formerly Twitter: “This is an absurd line. First Hester didn’t offer any “criticism” of Diane Abbott’s views; he described his reaction to seeing her on TV. And second what he said clearly had something to do with her gender and the colour of her skin because he referenced both of them.”
