UK Politics

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailMajor Tory donor Frank Hester has been under fire since comments that he allegedly made about Diane Abbott.He is accused of saying in 2019 that Britain’s longest-serving black MP made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”.Mr Hester has not denied making the remarks, but claimed they had “nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”.The Independent revealed Diane Abbott reported the Conservative Party’s biggest ever donor to the police.The MP filed a complaint with the Metropolitan Police’s parliamentary liaison and investigations team after Frank Hester, who donated £10m to the Tories last year, allegedly made a series of incendiary comments about her, including that she made him “want to hate all Black women”.In a statement issued on Tuesday morning, Ms Abbott, Britain’s longest-serving Black MP, had described the reported comments as “worrying”.“It is frightening. I live in Hackney, I don’t drive, so I find myself, at weekends, popping on a bus or even walking places, more than most MPs,” she said.“I am a single woman and that makes me vulnerable anyway. But to hear someone talking like this is worrying.”But who is the businessman embroiled in the racism row?What is Frank Hester’s background?The 58-year-old grew up in Armley in the west of Leeds, West Yorkshire. His parents, from Ireland, started a plastering business. It was his mother’s payroll work that inspired him to start writing software to speed up the process.Mr Hester trained as a priest before studying computer science at university and working as a software engineer in the financial sector.How did Frank Hester make his fortune?He founded The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) in 1997 in an effort “to improve efficiency and standards in the UK healthcare system” and “remove the administrative burden” from his GP wife, according to its website.The Yorkshire-based health tech company’s core product SystmOne allows digital medical records to be shared and is today used in more than 2,600 GP practices and a third of acute mental health trusts, as well as in China, the Middle East and the Caribbean.TPP is worth £1 billion after winning more than £400 million of NHS and prison contracts in the last eight years, according to the Guardian, which broke the story about Mr Hester’s comments about Ms Abbott.Then-Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott addresses anti-Brexit supporters in London, Saturday, October 19, 2019It was the subject of controversy in 2018 when an error by the company, used by the NHS, led to confidential health data of 150,000 patients being shared.During the pandemic, TPP was reported to have won a six-figure Government contract to supply data on vaccine uptake levels at GP practices in England.The service has proved to be very profitable, with TPP recording an £80 million turnover and profit before tax of £40 million in the year to March 2023, according to Companies House documents.Mr Hester, its sole director, netted a salary of £510,000.He appeared at number 321 on the 2023 Sunday Times Rich List, with the newspaper estimating his wealth at £415 million.Mr Hester wrote on LinkedIn that TPP takes “care of all of our staff” with “bacon sandwiches for breakfast and a free bar early evening at the local pub” on Fridays.In 2015, the businessman was made a member of the Order of the British Empire for his services to healthcare.What about his donations to the Conservative Party?Mr Hester donated £10 million to the Tories last year, according to Electoral Commission records.He individually donated £5 million to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party in May and gave another £5 million via TPP in November. Prime Minster Rishi Sunak departs 10 Downing Street to go to the House of Commons for his weekly PMQS Mr Sunak also accepted a personal gift of nearly £16,000 for a helicopter ride last December.In an interview with the Telegraph last month, Mr Hester said he spent much of his adult life voting for the Green Party or spoiling his ballot before turning to the Tories.The entrepreneur has been invited on several government trade missions in the past, including visiting India with then-prime minister David Cameron in 2013.He told the Telegraph the he became more supportive of the Tories on the trade trip, but that it was Mr Sunak’s engagement with artificial intelligence that convinced him to hand over cash.“I’ve had some quite long conversations with Rishi about AI,” he told the paper.The donations came as the Conservative Party continues to languish in the polls ahead of a general election expected later this year.Mr Hester has posted on LinkedIn about meeting Boris Johnson at the 2020 Commonwealth heads of government meeting and attending Mr Sunak’s AI discussion with tech billionaire Elon Musk last year.What happed in the past week?Before this week, Mr Hester kept a fairly low public profile for a leader of such a major company.But on Monday he was cast into the spotlight by a report about racist comments he allegedly made in 2019.The Guardian reported that, during a meeting at his Leeds company headquarters, he discussed Ms Abbott after criticising an executive at another organisation.He reportedly said: “It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like … you just want to hate all black women because she’s there.“And I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot.“(The executive) and Diane Abbott need to be shot.”The fallout intensified on Tuesday night when the newspaper reported that he referred to “no room for the Indians” during a crowded meeting, and suggested they “climb on the roof, like on the roof of the train there”.What was his response?Mr Hester admitted making “rude” comments about Ms Abbott, but claimed they had “nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”.In a statement released through his firm, Mr Hester said he had tried to call Ms Abbott on Monday to “apologise directly for the hurt he has caused her”.“He wishes to make it clear that he regards racism as a poison which has no place in public life.”Responding to the Guardian’s second story on X, formerly Twitter, he did not deny making the comments, but pointed out he also said “I abhor racism”.What was the wider reaction to the revelations?Mr Hester’s alleged comments were widely condemned, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats branding them racist and calling for the Tories to return his donations.After ministers and Downing Street refused to describe Mr Hester’s comments as racist for most of Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman finally labelled them as such in the evening.There is no sign Mr Sunak’s party is moving to hand back the cash Mr Hester has donated.Ms Abbott herself said the reported comments were “frightening” and “alarming” given that two MPs – Jo Cox and Sir David Amess – have been murdered in recent years. Police are understood to have been contacted. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email A minister in Britain’s Conservative government said Wednesday that the party does not plan to give back 10 million pounds ($12.8 million) it received in the past year from a donor who made comments about a Black lawmaker that have been condemned as racist.The government is under pressure from some of its own lawmakers to return the donation from business executive Frank Hester. He reportedly said in a 2019 company meeting that Diane Abbott, Britain’s longest-serving Black legislator, made him “want to hate all Black women” and that she “should be shot.”Hester, chief executive of healthcare software firm The Phoenix Partnership, is the Conservative Party’s biggest donor. His company has been paid more than 400 million pounds ($510 million) by the National Health Service and other government bodies since 2016.After the comments were published by The Guardian newspaper, Hester acknowledged that he’d been “rude about Diane Abbott” but denied being racist. In a statement on social media, he said racism “is a poison that has no place in public life.”Prime Minister Rishi Sunak initially criticized Hester’s comments as “unacceptable,” but it took almost 24 hours for him to call the remarks racist. His spokesman said Tuesday evening that “the comments allegedly made by Frank Hester were racist and wrong.”Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake told broadcasters on Wednesday that the party would not give back the money Hester had given to the party. He told Sky News that “clearly” the comments were racist, but that it was right to keep the donation because Hester “is not a racist, and he has apologized for what he said.”Asked by the BBC whether the party would take more money from Hester, Hollinrake said: “As I now understand the situation, yes.”But Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of England’s West Midlands region, told BBC radio that if it were up to him, “I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back.”Nus Ghani, a senior Conservative lawmaker and junior business minister, said on social media: “Zero tolerance on racism is just a slogan in today’s politics.”Britain’s political parties are trying to build up funds for election campaigns later this year. Figures from the Electoral Commission show the Conservatives received 9.8 million pounds ($12.5 million) from individual donors in the final three months of 2023, and the main opposition Labour Party 6 million pounds ($7.7 million).The Guardian published further alleged remarks by Hester on Wednesday. It said he’d told a crowded staff meeting that Indian employees could sit on the roof of a nearby train if there wasn’t enough room.Abbott, 70, was elected to the House of Commons in 1987 representing an area of east London, becoming Britain’s first Black woman member of Parliament. She sits as an independent after being kicked out of the Labour Party caucus last year for comments that suggested Jewish and Irish people do not experience racism “all their lives.”She called Hester’s comments “frightening,” especially since two British lawmakers have been murdered since 2016. The government said last month it would step up politicians’ security because of rising tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.Police in London said they were assessing the matter after their parliamentary liaison and investigation team was contacted about the Guardian’s initial report. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailGoogle has started the rollout of restrictions on what kind of election-related questions its AI chatbot Gemini will answer as it tries to prevent the spread of fake news during a year when billions of people will vote worldwide.The technology giant said that users in India will be restricted as to what they can ask Gemini, or at least what types of questions it will provide responses to.It is part of the company’s efforts to ensure that misinformation and disinformation is limited in a year when according to the Centre for American Progress more than two billion people in 50 countries will head to the polls.Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responsesGoogle India team Some of these elections will be contested freely and fairly, while others will not.The countries where votes are being held this year include the US, Mexico, Russia and probably the UK as well.But by far the biggest is India, where around 900 million people are registered to vote according to Chatham House.“With millions of eligible voters in India heading to the polls for the general election in the coming months, Google is committed to supporting the election process by surfacing high-quality information to voters, safeguarding our platforms from abuse and helping people navigate AI-generated content,” Google said in a blog post.The tech giant laid out a series of non-AI measures it was taking to try to reduce the harm for which its platforms might be used to spread.These include efforts to provide information directly from the Electoral Commission of India on Google Search and YouTube.But it will also include restrictions on how Gemini can be used.“Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses,” the Google India team said.“We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously, and are continuously working to improve our protections.” More