On Tuesday night, No 10 called the comments “racist and wrong” after mounting pressure. Earlier in the day, government ministers had suggested Hester’s comments were not related to Abbott’s race and gender.
The party have faced calls, including from Labour, to return a £10m donation Hester made to the Conservative party last year.
On Wednesday morning, a government minister suggested the party would not return the money.
Asked on Sky News whether the Tories should give back Hester’s money, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said:
I don’t think that is the right thing to do …
I think his comments were clearly racist and wrong, there is no question about that. You don’t judge somebody’s character based on their skin colour.
He has apologised for that. I don’t think that means Frank Hester is necessarily a racist.
Asked whether he would be comfortable spending Hester’s donations, Hollinrake said: “On the basis he is not a racist, has apologised for what he said, yes.”
After the publication of the donor’s remarks, a statement from the healthcare technology firm the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), which Hester runs, said he “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 nor colour of skin”.
The statement said Hester “abhorred” racism, “not least because he experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970s”.
The statement added: “He rang Diane Abbott twice today to try to apologise directly for the hurt he has caused her, and is deeply sorry for his remarks. He wishes to make it clear that he regards racism as a poison, which has no place in public life.”
TPP’s lawyers have previously said the comments were not a true or accurate characterisation of the company or Hester.
Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, has said that he personally would return a £10m donation from Frank Hester. Asked if the party should return the money, he told the Today programme:
I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back.
I have to give you my view, rather than what the party should do, but I’ve thought about how I would handle that situation.
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, picking up from Sammy Gecsoyler.
Kevin Hollinrake, the postal services minister, did not just say that he did not think the Tories would be returning the £10m they have received from Frank Hester in his interviews this morning. (See 8.48am.) In an interview with BBC Breakfast, he even suggested that the party might take more money from Hester.
As PA Media reports, asked on whether the Conservatives would take another £10 million from Hester, Hollinrake said:
On the basis that we don’t think Mr Hester is a racist, yes.
Asked to clarify that the Tories would accept further money from the businessman, the minister said: “As I now understand the situation, yes.”
Hollinrake was on the media round because today the government is publishing the legislation to exonerate post office operators who were wrongly jailed as a result of the Horizon IT scandal. Eleni Courea has a preview here.
I’m afraid we are having to keep the comments off for the moment. That is because the Guardian is legally liable for what gets published in the comments section and, as soon as our original Frank Hester story was published, we started getting a tonne of comments that, unlike the Guardian report, had not been libel-proofed by lawyers. The moderators remove problematic posts, but they don’t have the capacity to do this when dozens of difficult comments are going up minute by minute, and so to avoid risk we have to close comments down.
We will get them back up when we can. In the meantime, I have opened the ‘send us a message’ function.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have released a joint statement warning that Michael Gove’s new defintion of extremism could cause further “division” and threaten the country’s “rich diversity”.
Gove is set to unveil the government’s new definition of extremism on Thursday and use parliamentary privilege to name groups that he says fall foul of this new definition, despite pushback from government lawyers who have warned about the legal implications of doing so.
The move comes after Rishi Sunak said in a speech outside No 10 earlier this month that there had been “a shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality” since 7 October, in comments seen as a thinly veiled attack on pro-Palestine demonstrations. Gove previously told the Sunday Telegraph that “good-hearted people” who have taken part in marches should be aware they could be “lending credence” to extremists.
In a joint statement, the Most Reverend Justin Welby and the Most Reverend StephenCottrell said the “growing division between different communities in this country” is a threat to the country’s “rich diversity”.
They said:
How our leaders respond to this is far too important for a new definition of extremism to be its cure.
Instead of providing clarity or striking a conciliatory tone, we think labelling a multi-faceted problem as hateful extremism may instead vilify the wrong people and risk yet more division.
The new definition being proposed not only inadvertently threatens freedom of speech, but also the right to worship and peaceful protest - things that have been hard won and form the fabric of a civilised society.
Crucially, it risks disproportionately targeting Muslim communities, who are already experiencing rising levels of hate and abuse.
We are concerned - like so many others - by its implications for public life.
We join calls for the government to reconsider its approach and instead have a broad-based conversation with all those who it will affect.
The UK has a proud history of welcoming people from all walks of life and celebrating diversity. We are a community of communities.
Our leaders should cherish and promote that - and pursue policies that bring us together, not risk driving us apart.
Outside parliament, Greenpeace UK activists have erected a mock cemetery with hundreds of headstone representing those who have died due to damp, cold homes and are urging the government to invest £6bn a year to make homes warmer, improve health, cut bills and tackle climate change.
The group estimates that more than 70,000 excess winter deaths in the UK were linked to living in cold, damp housing conditions in the decade since the coalition government slashed support for home insulation measures.
In a protest at what it described as the “needless and shocking” deaths from living in cold homes, the green group installed headstones made from insulation boards in Victoria Tower Gardens and an eight-metre-long funeral wreath reading “cold homes cost lives”.
It is calling for a national retrofit insulation programme funded to the tune of £6bn a year to tackle the health crisis and make homes warmer, more efficient and cheaper to heat. Campaigners are also urging Labour to reinstate its pledge to spend £6bn a year on energy efficiency, which was significantly scaled back in its recent U-turn on spending £28bn a year on green measures.
🚨 BREAKING: Activists have built a cemetery outside Parliament.
Since 2013, MORE than 70,000 people have died because of cold, damp homes.
Labour’s shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth said he found it “absolutely astonishing” that the Conservative party “won’t pay this £10m back” that was donated by Frank Hester last year.
Asked on Sky News about the length of time it took Downing Street to brand Hester’s reported remarks about Diane Abbott as racist, Ashworth said:
I thought it was absolutely staggering. It took Rishi Sunak 24 hours to condemn these racist, reprehensible comments about Diane Abbott.
I think that shows how weak Rishi Sunak is. You will remember a couple of weeks ago it took him a while to take on, now the Reform MP, Lee Anderson for Islamophobic comments. He should have been out there condemning these comments immediately.
But, fundamentally, he has taken £10m from this individual. Every Tory MP and candidate handing out leaflets, paying for Facebook advertising – it is funded by this £10m from this individual who has made these deeply racist, offensive comments.
If Rishi Sunak had anything about him, if he had any backbone, he would pay that money back today.
But, actually, you have had a Conservative minister on the BBC just a few moments ago saying they would take another £10m from this individual. I think that just shows you how weak and how desperate the Tory party have become under Rishi Sunak.
A statement from the healthcare technology firm the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), which Hester runs, said he “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 nor colour of skin”.
Today looks set to be a busy one in Westminster. Hester’s comments are likely to be a focal point at prime ministers questions, which begins at noon.
Later in the Commons, the government’s plans to reduce national insurance rates will be debated and Tory MP Kate Kniveton – who went through the family courts to block her ex-husband former MP Andrew Griffiths from seeing their child after he was found by a judge to be abusive – has the adjournment debate on child custody arrangements.
Elsewhere, business Secretary Kemi Badenoch will be welcoming Texas Governor Greg Abbott to No 10 at lunchtime to sign a trade pact with the state, the eighth such deal with an individual US state. It looks set to include provisions on carbon capture and life sciences. Both politicians will be speaking to the media at 12:45pm.
Liz Kendall, the shadow work and pensions secretary, will be speaking at the TUC pensions conference at 10am, where she’ll say “if Labour made a commitment 100 times smaller than this we would rightly be asked to spell out – where is the money coming from?”
Defence secretary Grant Shapps is on a two-day visit to Poland and Norway vising UK forces taking part in Nato exercises.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) released a report today which said the UK’s plans for adapting to the effects of the climate crisis “fall far short” of what is required and that the government had no credible plan for making the country resilient to the increasing effects of extreme weather.
Good morning. Sammy Gecsoyler on the blog here until 10am GMT.
On Tuesday night, No 10 called the comments “racist and wrong” after mounting pressure. Earlier in the day, government ministers had suggested Hester’s comments were not related to Abbott’s race and gender.
The party have faced calls, including from Labour, to return a £10m donation Hester made to the Conservative party last year.
On Wednesday morning, a government minister suggested the party would not return the money.
Asked on Sky News whether the Tories should give back Hester’s money, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake said:
I don’t think that is the right thing to do …
I think his comments were clearly racist and wrong, there is no question about that. You don’t judge somebody’s character based on their skin colour.
He has apologised for that. I don’t think that means Frank Hester is necessarily a racist.
Asked whether he would be comfortable spending Hester’s donations, Hollinrake said: “On the basis he is not a racist, has apologised for what he said, yes.”
After the publication of the donor’s remarks, a statement from the healthcare technology firm the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), which Hester runs, said he “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 nor colour of skin”.
The statement said Hester “abhorred” racism, “not least because he experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970s”.
The statement added: “He rang Diane Abbott twice today to try to apologise directly for the hurt he has caused her, and is deeply sorry for his remarks. He wishes to make it clear that he regards racism as a poison, which has no place in public life.”
TPP’s lawyers have previously said the comments were not a true or accurate characterisation of the company or Hester.