Daniel Kawczynski

Kawczynski was born on 24 January 1972 in Warsaw. His parents were Leonard and Halina Kawczynski.[3] He came to Britain with his mother at the age of six.[4][5] 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.[6][7] 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.[3][7]

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.[8] 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.[9]

Upon entering Parliament he established the All Party Parliamentary Group for milk farmers to help milk farmers in his constituency.[10] 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.[11] 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.[11]

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".[12] In May 2008, he voted to lower the abortion time limit to 12 weeks,[13] 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.[14] He voted against a House of Lords amendment to abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel under common law.[15] 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".[16] 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.[17] In 2010, Kawczynski called for the ban on fox hunting to be repealed by the Conservative government.[18]

He was re-elected at the 2010 general election with 43.9% of the vote.[19] In September 2012, he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the new Secretary of State for Wales, David Jones.[1] When Jones lost his role in 2014, Kawczynski became advisor to the Prime Minister David Cameron on Eastern and Central European Diaspora.[20] 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.[21][22][23][24] he was chair of the All-Party Group for Libya but that group has now ceased to exist.[25] In October 2013, Kawczynski received widespread press attention for berating a one-legged wheelchair user for begging outside the Houses of Parliament.[26][27][28]

Kawczynski held his seat in the 2015 general election.[29] In the 2016 Conservative Party leadership election, he supported Michael Gove.[30]

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".[31] 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.[32] Kawczynski expressed support for a prospective leadership bid by Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2018.[33] 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.[34] He faced calls to be suspended from Parliament.[35] He was eventually given a formal warning by the Conservative Party, but did not have the whip withdrawn.[36]

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.[37] 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.[38] After challenges, Kawczynski did not delete the tweet nor retract it.[39][40]

In 2000, Kawczynski married Kate Lumb and they had a daughter; the couple divorced in 2011.[52] In June 2013, he announced to his Conservative Association that his new partner was male.[53] He was the second MP in Britain to come out as bisexual, the first being Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes.[54][55] He married his Brazilian partner of eight years, Fernando, on 9 November 2019, in a civil partnership ceremony in the House of Commons.[56][57] He currently lives in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening and playing golf.[58]

In 2010, Kawczynski published a book called Seeking Gaddafi about Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

• Official website
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou
• "Daniel Kawczynski MP". BBC.