Daniel Kawczynski


Daniel Robert Kawczynski is a British Conservative Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury and Atcham since 2005.
In the past he has served as Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a parliamentary aide to the former Welsh Secretary David Jones, as well as serving as a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and as Special Advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron on Central and Eastern Europe and on Central and Eastern Europeans living in the United Kingdom.

Early life and education

Kawczynski was born on 24 January 1972 in Warsaw. His parents were Leonard and Halina Kawczynski. He came to Britain with his mother at the age of six. He was educated at St George's College, Weybridge, an independent Roman Catholic school in Surrey, followed by Birmingham Polytechnic and then the University of Stirling where he studied business studies and French, graduating in 1994. He served as president of the university's Conservative Association in 1991.
He worked in the business entertainment industry before he became an international account manager in the telecommunications industry, a position he held for ten years from 1994 to 2004.

Parliamentary career

Kawczynski unsuccessfully stood as the Conservative Party candidate in the 2001 general election for Ealing Southall in London, coming second with 18% of the vote. At the following general election Kawczynski was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the Shrewsbury and Atcham constituency. He was elected at the 2005 general election, succeeding the Labour MP Paul Marsden with 37.7% of the vote.
Upon entering Parliament he established the All Party Parliamentary Group for milk farmers to help milk farmers in his constituency. He sat as a member of both the International Development Select Committee and the Justice Select Committee, but was criticised by the Birmingham Post in 2009 for failing to regularly attend the meetings of the Select Committees to which he had been appointed. Kawczynski was recorded as having attended only 12.5% of all Justice Select Committee meetings and 31.3% of International Development Select Committee meetings during the previous last Parliamentary session. He stated the figure for the international development committee was wrong and he had been unable to attend the justice committee meetings because they clashed.
In 2007, he signed an Early Day Motion that welcomed the "positive contribution made to the health of the nation by the NHS homeopathic hospitals". In May 2008, he voted to lower the abortion time limit to 12 weeks, and has said that he believes an abortion limit of 24 weeks is incompatible with the kind of "Christian society" he wishes to live in. He voted against a House of Lords amendment to abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel under common law. In October 2009, Kawczynski appeared on The Doha Debates as a delegate supporting the motion of "This house deplores the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi". In the wake of the Westminster Parliamentary Expenses scandal in 2009, Kawczynski was ordered to repay £4000 for rent costs that he had over-claimed. In 2010, Kawczynski called for the ban on fox hunting to be repealed by the Conservative government.
He was re-elected at the 2010 general election with 43.9% of the vote. In September 2012, he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the new Secretary of State for Wales, David Jones. When Jones lost his role in 2014, Kawczynski became advisor to the Prime Minister David Cameron on Eastern and Central European Diaspora. Kawczynski voted in favour of same sex marriage in 2013, revealing shortly afterwards that he was in a same-sex relationship. Kawczynski was chair of the All-Party Group for Saudi Arabia between 2011 and 2016, during his time as chairman he led delegations to the country. he was chair of the All-Party Group for Libya but that group has now ceased to exist. In October 2013, Kawczynski received widespread press attention for berating a one-legged wheelchair user for begging outside the Houses of Parliament.
Kawczynski held his seat in the 2015 general election. In the 2016 Conservative Party leadership election, he supported Michael Gove.
He was re-elected in the 2017 general election. It was reported in early November 2017 that Kawczynski had been reprimanded in front of witnesses by Eleanor Laing, Conservative MP and the deputy speaker, for asking a young researcher employed by Laing to go on a date with a rich businessman contact of his who was "older than her father". The incident in January 2013, according to Channel 4 News in November 2017, was preceded by an intermediary making the same approach several times. Laura Hughes, writing for The Daily Telegraph, reported that Kawczynski has been referred to the Conservative's new disciplinary committee. He has admitted to the incident, but rejects the accusation of inappropriate conduct. Kawczynski expressed support for a prospective leadership bid by Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2018. In 2020, he was reprimanded for sharing a platform with right-wing populist politicians such as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and the former deputy prime minister of Italy Matteo Salvini, at a conference organised by the Edmund Burke Foundation. He faced calls to be suspended from Parliament. He was eventually given a formal warning by the Conservative Party, but did not have the whip withdrawn.
From February 2018, Kawczynski was paid £6,000 per month by the Electrum Group, a New York City-based investment, advisory and asset management firm owned by Thomas Kaplan. Kawczynski defended his association with the American company by saying that work for them would be done in his spare time. On 2 February 2019, Kawczynski was criticised for tweeting that the UK had received no Marshall Plan aid after World War II, in the context of a complaint about the alleged attitude of the European Union. He said, "Britain helped to liberate half of Europe. She mortgaged herself up to eye balls in process. No Marshall Plan for us only for Germany. We gave up war reparations in 1990. We put £370 billion into EU since we joined. Watch the way ungrateful EU treats us now. We will remember." In fact, the United Kingdom received the most Marshall Plan funding of any country in Europe, receiving $2.7 billion in aid. Germany received $1.7 billion. After challenges, Kawczynski did not delete the tweet nor retract it.

Political views

Saudi Arabia

In 2015, Kawczynski was described as a strong supporter of the Saudi Arabian government. On one of his trips to Saudi Arabia, Kawczynski told Salman Al Saud how proud he was of the military cooperation between the two countries. He later said that he was writing "the most pro-Saudi book ever written by a British politician" and that he had been "battling against extraordinary ignorance and prejudice against Saudi Arabia for many years".
Following an appearance on Newsnight in which he defended the Saudi regime's approach to the war in Yemen and accused the programme of bias, Kawczynski threatened legal action after its editor Ian Katz suggested his strength of feeling on the issue might be linked to the size of the budget for his expenses on trips to Saudi Arabia. After Michael Gove cancelled a prison contract with Saudi Arabia, Kawczynski was so enraged that he slapped his forehead and shouted "no!" during a parliamentary debate on the issue.

Anglo-Polish relations

Since becoming the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Poland in 2014, Kawczynski has supported a range of enterprises from his constituency in seeking business partners and export markets in Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries, offering support and advice. Kawczynski has been a frequent visitor to the British Polish Chamber of Commerce in Warsaw where he often described the importance of trade between Poland and the United Kingdom.
In 2016, Kawczynski was distinguished as an "Outstanding Pole Abroad of 2016" for his efforts in promoting trade and political relations between the United Kingdom and his country of birth. In 2017, Kawczynski joined calls for Germany to pay war reparations for crimes committed against the Allies and for the destruction of Poland during the Second World War. On 15 October 2017, Kawczynski sent a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to stop demanding money from the UK during the Brexit negotiations and pay Poland. In 2019, Kawczynski said he had asked the Polish Government to veto any requests for an extension of the Article 50 period that might be made by the UK Government.

European Union

Kawczynski is a vocal supporter of Brexit and former member of the European Research Group, which he left in April 2019. In September 2018, Kawczynski, who strongly supports Brexit, said on Twitter that EU lemon growers are inefficient, and that the EU imposed tariffs on the import of fruit from non-EU Mediterranean countries, causing higher prices to consumers. Both claims were refuted.

Personal life

In 2000, Kawczynski married Kate Lumb and they had a daughter; the couple divorced in 2011. In June 2013, he announced to his Conservative Association that his new partner was male. He was the second MP in Britain to come out as bisexual, the first being Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes. He married his Brazilian partner of eight years, Fernando, on 9 November 2019, in a civil partnership ceremony in the House of Commons. He currently lives in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening and playing golf.
In 2010, Kawczynski published a book called Seeking Gaddafi about Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.