Biggest Tory donor: looking at Diane Abbott makes you 'want to hate all black women'

Remarks by man who gave party £10m raise questions over his behaviour in workplace

- Rowena Mason, Matthew Weaver ,Henry Dyer

The Conservative party’s biggest donor told colleagues that looking at Diane Abbott ma de you “want to hate all black women” and said the MP “should be shot”, the Guardian can reveal.

Frank Hester , who has given £10m to the Tories in the past year, said in the meeting that he did not hate all black women. But he also said that seeing Abbott, who is Britain’s longest-serving black MP, on television meant “you just want to hate all black women because she’s there”.

He also called all his “foreign” workers together to defend himself against online claims that he had made racist remarks.

During this meeting 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”.

The remarks raise questions about the workplace behaviour and professionalism of a man whose money will be helping to bankroll the Conservative party’s general election campaign.

Hester, a businessman from West Yorkshire, runs a healthcare technology fi rm, the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), which has been paid more than £400m by the NHS and other government bodies since 2016, primarily to look after 60m UK medical records. He has profi ted from £135m of contracts with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in less than four years.