Reform’s Welsh hopes damaged after Senedd member suspended for ‘vile’ racial slur

Reform UK’s only member of the Welsh parliament has been suspended for two weeks over a racial slur she posted in an office WhatsApp group. Laura Anne Jones used an offensive Chinese slur in a discussion about the threat of the Chinese government utilising TikTok for espionage. On Wednesday evening, the Welsh parliament voted for Jones, who defected from the Tories to Reform in the summer, to be suspended for a fortnight without pay. Jones’s suspension is a blow for Reform, which has high hopes of making dramatic gains in next year’s Senedd elections. Related: Reform UK suspends another member of Kent county council When Jones joined Reform, its leader, Nigel Farage, said the party was confident the allegations against her would “all go away”. Some people wavering over whether to back Reform candidates at the ballot box next year in Wales may be put off by Jones’s exclusion. It comes four weeks after Reform’s hopes of winning the Caerphilly byelection were dashed by Plaid Cymru. The loss there was seen as a rejection by many voters of Reform’s anti-immigration stance in a country that has long prided itself on being welcoming to newcomers. Jones’s suspension follows an investigation by the Senedd’s standards commissioner, Douglas Bain. A report by the Senedd’s standards of conduct committee said Bain found that, in August 2023, Jones posted a racist slur about Chinese spies in a WhatsApp group. The report said: “At that time there was public concern about the use of TikTok by the Chinese government to gather information.” According to the report, in another WhatsApp exchange involving Jones in November 2023, a member of her staff posted the message: “Suella [Braverman, the former UK home secretary] was correct. We have two-tier policing. It was clear over the weekend if your [sic] white working class, you get hammered, if you’re an Islamist it’s all fine, spew all the hate you want.” Around that time, Braverman was criticising a ban on a march by the UK Independence party in Whitechapel, east London. The report said Jones had accepted this post was unacceptable but at the time did not reprimand the staff member. The standards of conduct committee concluded: “The conduct found in this report fell far below the standards expected. It points to an office culture where there was little respect towards others or any consideration of what may be found offensive.” Jones was cleared of complaints relating to making false expenses claims. Addressing the Senedd before her suspension, Jones apologised for the language she used. “I never meant to cause any offence,” she said. Jones added that the process – and leaks about it to the press – have had a negative impact on her family and her own health. She said she had nearly taken her own life. After the report was released last week, a Reform UK Wales spokesperson said: “Laura has rightly apologised for her comments, made in a private WhatsApp.” A Plaid Cymru spokesperson called Jones’s “vile and completely unacceptable”. They said: “The fact that Reform accepted the member’s defection tells us everything you need to know about the party, whose divided rhetoric only serves to pit our communities against each other.” A Welsh Labour spokesperson said: “She made these comments when she was a Conservative, but we’ve seen in Caerphilly that the same sort of language is part of the Reform UK playbook.”