"I shouldn't have said those words. I didn't mean anything by it."
"Growing up around here, when I was young, which is a long time ago now - I'm 46 - language was very different and that was a term used for a takeaway. "I'm not going to sit here and make excuses because I'm genuinely sorry for that. "I've done language training as my staff, and it will never happen again. "I'll be very, very careful of language that I use. I never wanted to hurt anyone and that was never the intention."
""I will always be supportive of everybody in this country," she added. "I am not a racist by any stretch of the imagination.""
Laura Anne Jones used an offensive racial slur about Chinese people in an August 2023 WhatsApp chat and was suspended from the Senedd for two weeks in December. The standards commissioner found she broke the code of conduct and her pay was docked, while clearing her of fraudulent expenses claims. Jones apologised, said the term had been used to refer to a takeaway during her childhood, denied being racist, and said she has completed language training and will avoid using the word again. Members of the Chinese community reported that the slur caused significant hurt.
Read at www.bbc.com
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