Tributes to Mohammad Asghar at Welsh Parliament

The Welsh Parliament has paid tribute to the Conservative Senedd member for South Wales East, Mohammad Asghar, who died on Tuesday aged 74.

Mr Asghar became the body's first ethnic minority politician when he was first elected in 2007.

Members held a minute's silence at the start of Wednesday's virtual session.

Paul Davies, the Tory group's leader, said he was a man whose life was "dedicated to enriching and supporting those around him".

He said Mr Asghar, known as Oscar in Cardiff Bay, had sought to "widen every possible connection between the ethnic minority groups and this institution".

"Oscar worked so hard to open the door and invite them in," he said.

"He was also a rare thing in politics, someone who spoke no ill of others, who was not capable of hate, who saw in other politicians of all parties a shared commitment to achieve for their communities and their constituencies."

Most normal business in the chamber on Wednesday was suspended.

Labour First Minister Mark Drakeford praised Mr Asghar's "indefatigable attendance at events to mark and celebrate the contribution of minority communities in Wales".

"HIs presence was of a different significance because he was there to demonstrate that someone who had arrived in Wales from a different continent had been able to make a successful life here," he said.

Born in Peshawar, in what is now Pakistan, Mr Asghar moved to England and then Wales to complete an accountancy course in Newport, becoming a councillor in the city in 2004.

He was elected as a Plaid Cymru Senedd politician three years later, having previously been in the Labour Party, and defected to the Conservative group in 2009.

During Wednesday afternoon's tributes, Plaid party leader Adam Price said "politics was never an ideology to Oscar".

He was a "political free spirit in many ways, a larger than life character [who] could never be confined in the confines of one party".

"We will miss the light of his smile and the grace of his soul," said Mr Price.

Brexit Party leader Mark Reckless praised Mr Asghar's "commitment to our institutions", including the monarchy.

That devotion was "such that perhaps is not as fashionable now, as it may have been in the past, but Oscar's belief in our country and institutions was quite extraordinary", Mr Reckless said.

Closing the tributes, Presiding Officer Elin Jones said her eyes "keep being drawn to look to my right, as I would in the chamber to the Conservative backbench and to an empty chair".

"A chair, a parliamentary seat, that Mohammad Asghar filled with such pride and passion," she said.

"When we return to our chamber, Mohammad Asghar will not be with us, but his generous spirit and his tolerant worldview will help guide us all through these troubling times."