Alleged comments about Diane Abbott and others

In March 2024, The Guardian reported that Hester had made comments in a 2019 company meeting about the MP Diane Abbott. The paper reported that he said that looking at Abbott makes you "want to hate all black women" and that she "should be shot", as well as making comments about a female executive from another organisation, saying "it would be much better if she died", and about his own Asian female employees, saying “we take the piss out of the fact that all our Chinese girls sit together in Asian corner”.^[20] BBC News also reported what The Guardian said, adding that they were unable to verify that the alleged remarks had been made.^[21] The Guardian also reported that Hester's lawyers had said "that Hester’s comments had been distorted and taken out of context, and were not a true or accurate characterisation of the company or Hester".^[20] A statement from The Phoenix Partnership said 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 nor colour of skin". The statement said Hester abhorred racism.^[20]

The prime minister's official spokesperson initially condemned the remarks but did not call them racist.^[22][23] Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said the comments about Abbott "were clearly inappropriate" but people should "move on" and such comments were not "race-based" and "had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin". Energy Minister Graham Stuart said while the remarks were "ridiculous" he would "hesitate" to call them racist.^[23][24] Many opposition politicians criticised Hester's reported comments and called such comments racist.^[23] The Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and then the prime minister Rishi Sunak separately described Hester's alleged comments as "racist" although Sunak declined to return Hester's political donations.^[25] Abbott, who described the comments as "frightening", filed a complaint about the reported remarks to the Metropolitan Police's Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team. Hester said he had tried twice to apologise to her, by phone, once the comments were made public.^[26]

On 14 March, as a result of Hester's alleged remarks, health workers' trade union, the British Medical Association (BMA), called upon Hester to resign from his company TPP. The BMA's general practitioners' committee (GPC) voted in favour of an emergency motion that he had "contravened NHS England's fit and proper person test framework introduced in response to the 2019 Kark review recommendations." The co-chairs of the GPC general practitioners' committee said that the passing of the motion, "makes it clear how appalled GPs are". Christina McAnea, the general secretary of Unison, which represents half a million NHS workers, echoed the views of the doctors' body.^[27]