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

Lady Zahida Manzoor was paid £148,000 for the part-time role, showing Hester’s party links date back further than first thought

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.