Donating £5 million to the Conservative Party has brought the relatively unknown millionaire Frank Hester into public focus, with his money potentially reversing the Tories' political fortunes.
For the past 26 years, the expert computer programmer has built up his digital health care business that allows doctors and nurses rapid access to patient files.
The cash boost shows Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's "tech bro" image is beginning to appeal to figures in the tech world, a former Downing Street political strategist told The National.
Born to Irish immigrant parents, the 57-year-old is understood to have a connection with Mr Sunak, living in the same Richmond constituency in Yorkshire.
His fortune was made from founding The Phoenix Partnership that creates electronic patient records, inspired in part following his father’s death from terminal lung disease when a hospital error meant staff went against his wishes and resuscitated him following a heart attack.
“While I don’t blame anyone for this mistake, it left a mark deep inside me to try to improve the way healthcare is delivered in this country,” Mr Hester wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
He was also inspired by witnessing his wife, a GP, having poor access to a patient-record storing system.
Silicon Valley mindset at play
John McTernan, a political strategist, told The National that Mr Hester’s donation shows the Prime Minister is appealing to “tech bros”.
Mr Sunak has described himself as a proud “tech geek” and before entering No 10 promised tax breaks for companies doing research and development. He was said to have been “infected” with the Silicon Valley mindset while studying at Stanford.
But while Mr Sunak may be celebrating the financial boost from a fellow tech whizz from his constituency county of Yorkshire, Mr McTernan said money may not be enough to win voters’ trust.
“As a tech bro he is appealing to tech bros, but not to voters. Sometimes Sunak looks like he wishes he was living and working in northern California rather than in Downing Street.”
Mr McTernan served as Tony Blair’s director of political operations in No 10 from 2005-2007, and special adviser to Gordon Brown’s government.
He argued Mr Hester may end up regretting the lump sum donation if the Conservatives fail to come out on top in the next general election, expected to take place in 2024.
The party have trailed Labour in opinion polls for months and a recent ballot gave Labour a 28-point lead.
“I think the Tories will welcome [Mr Hester’s] money but they are in a very difficult position, 20 points behind in the polls,” Mr McTernan said.
“This guy is wasting his money.
“The Tories have just recently raised the spending limit for general elections so they are planning to have a high-spending campaign.”
With the Sunday Times Rich List estimating his total wealth at £415m, putting him in joint 321st place in the UK, the £5m donation should not prove too burdensome for Mr Hester.
It also exactly matches the amount given by the Egyptian-born billionaire Mohamed Mansour that was reportedly the party's biggest single donation since 2001.
Mr Hester declared his support for the Conservative leader in a first-person piece in The Daily Telegraph on Thursday.
“In Rishi Sunak I see someone who shares my passion for using technology to enable front line workers to spend more time treating patients and ultimately revolutionise the way healthcare is delivered in Britain," he wrote.
The businessman admitted that he did not “follow the intricacies of Westminster” and that some might call him “naive for donating such a large amount of money to a party which is languishing in the polls”.
In Mr Sunak he saw someone “who is utterly dedicated to the success of this country”.
Mr Hester also has business connections with India, where Mr Sunak’s multimillionaire wife was born and has extensive business interests.
In 2013 he was among 250 business executives and others who paid £2,500 for a plane ticket to join prime minister David Cameron on a trip to win business in Mumbai.
He told the Financial Times that he hoped to break into the expanding Indian health market. “This trip is worth a lot of money to us – it’s invaluable,” he said. “Being with the PM and UK Trade and Investment means we [see] the right people. If it had just been us, it would have taken years to meet the right people.”
Conservative Party sources contacted by The National disclosed that they had little knowledge of Mr Hester or his connections to the Tories.
That might in part be explained by his admission that he originally supported the Green Party until he discovered they wanted to “close the M1 motorway” that connects London to northern England.
“I have not heard of him,” a veteran party official said. “But he does appear to have some government interaction via NHS contracts.”
Questions will now be raised over his healthcare business and the substantial party donation.
TPP has at least one government contract worth £150,000 and it was disclosed earlier this month that the company had made a similar donation to the Tories. Mr Hester later repaid the money to his own company.
It has also been reported that TPP met with government officials three times in the last year including a meeting with the Health Secretary Stephen Barclay in which they discussed healthcare technology.
In 2018 an error in software made by TPP led to confidential health information on 150,000 patients being shared.
Founded in 1999, by 2014 TPP had become a £25 million turnover business through the success of its SystmOne product, according to The Yorkshire Post.
The secure centralised system allows patient data to be shared across health services spanning primary, secondary community and social care. This cohesion was key to Mr Hester's vision for his company following the death of his father.
In recent years the company has been increasingly looking overseas. Mr Hester travelled to Indonesia last year where his tech was named as the Best Hospital Solutions by HIMSS.
Last week he received Cameroon's health minister at TPP's headquarters in Leeds to discuss ways to improve healthcare in the African nation.
An electronic tool developed by TPP that can help to predict the impact of chemotherapy on frail patients won an award from the Royal College of Physicians.
The electronic frailty index was developed using a cumulative deficit frailty model and calculates a measure of a patient’s frailty with pre-existing conditions.
The technology was recognised as a recommended tool to identify frail patients in the 2017/18 GP contract announced by NHS England.
Mr Hester appeared to join X, formerly Twitter, in 2022 posting largely on medical conferences in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, accumulating 258 “X” followers to date.
His “pinned” X picture is of him receiving the OBE from the-then Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in 2022. There are also photographs of Mr Hester meeting Boris Johnson while he was prime minister.
Asked what drove him in business in a 2013 Guardian interview Mr Hester responded: “I'm one of those people who believes I can make a difference to the world and I now know our product has made that difference.”
Mr Hester, who is also an accomplished piano player, praised Mr Sunak’s work on resolving Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit issues, stating that the country was also “close to my own heart”.
