Laura Anne Jones has been elected Reform’s new deputy leader in Wales, the party has announced.

The post was vacated after the previous deputy Helen Jenner took the party’s Senedd leadership on Tuesday.

In a statement, Jones said: “We’ve made a fantastic start here in the Senedd, giving a voice to the voiceless and standing up for Wales’ left-behind communities.”

Reform has not announced further details of the election, including other candidates, which they said took place on Monday morning.

Jones was suspended from the Senedd in November 2025 after she used a racial slur to describe Chinese people in a Whatsapp chat.

She apologised and denied she was racist.

Jenner became party leader after her predecessor Dan Thomas quit last week, following his arrest on suspicion of assault and coercive or controlling behaviour.

Thomas is on police bail pending further enquiries, and denies doing anything wrong.

The party did not say in its initial statement whether anyone stood against Jones.

A spokesperson, asked if any other MSs were interested, said there was an election that followed group rules and that she was not appointed.

Laura Anne Jones is a former Conservative who defected to Reform in the summer of 2025.

At the time she was the highest profile defection the party had achieved in Wales, unveiled in a shock press conference at the Royal Welsh Show that riled her former Tory colleagues.

Jones won re-election on Reform’s list in Sir Fynwy Torfaen last May – she is the party’s rural affairs spokesperson.

Jones was suspended from the Senedd for two weeks in November 2025 after it emerged she had used a racial slur to describe Chinese people in a Whatsapp chat.

She later said she was “genuinely sorry” for using the slur in August 2023 and denied she was racist.

The MS also courted controversy when she said rival parties had “entertained” the idea of children self-identifying as cats.

Jones was accused of misinformation but said the matter had been raised with her by parents.

Jenner was elected by Reform MSs in a meeting on Monday, and was unveiled by UK party leader Nigel Farage on the Senedd steps.

Farage said Jenner, who had been a member of UKIP before joining Reform’s predecessor the Brexit Party, was “a determined campaigner”.