Frank Hester’s TPP employed Conservative peer as trade envoy in 2016

News Snapshot:

The company run by the Tory donor Frank Hester, whose remarks about Diane Abbott have been widely condemned as racist, paid a Conservative peer £148,000 to act as a trade envoy, the Guardian can reveal, as evidence of his links to the party deepen. Zahida Manzoor, a former deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality in the 1990s who went on to be a Lords whip under Theresa May’s government, took on the part-time role as chair of a Middle East advisory council for Hester’s health tech TPP in September 2016. The £12,300-a-month role, which ended in September 2017,...