Daniel Kawczynski

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Daniel Kawczynski bigraphy, stories - British politician

Daniel Kawczynski : biography

24 January 1972 –

Daniel Robert Kawczynski (born 24 January 1972) is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member for Parliament (MP) for Shrewsbury and Atcham in Shropshire, England.

He is currently a parliamentary aide to the Welsh Secretary David Jones.

Extra-parliamentary career and Register of Interests

Kawczynski is the sole director and shareholder of SAH Solutions Ltd (formerly Sarayah Al-Hamra Consulting Limited). On the company’s website, it is claimed that Government Departments are amongst its clients.

Kawczynski has not declared how much, if any, income he receives from SAH Solutions Ltd.

In 2012, Kawczynski was paid £9,000 for 3x 8 hours of consultancy by a mining company, Tigris and £1,000 by Shamraeff, an engineering project management consultancy. In 2011, he was paid £2,000 for 5 hours’ work for Chelgate, a public relations consultancy. Between Jan 2011 and Feb 2012, he was paid £28,000 for working as a business consultant for CGI Consulting, a Coventry engineering consultancy company.

Kawczynski has received donations in kind by a number of foreign individuals, organisations and Governments, including Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Morocco, Israel, Sudan, India and the Conservative Arab Network.

Personal life

Kawczynski was divorced by his wife in 2011, and in June 2013 announced to his Conservative Association that his new partner is male.Eden, Richard (30 June 2013). . The Telegraph. He is the first MP in Britain to come out as bisexual. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tory-mp-daniel-kawczynski-comes-out-as-bisexual-8680343.html

Biography

Kawczynski was born in Warsaw, Poland. He came to the UK in the 1970s with his mother.

Kawczynski was educated at St George’s College, an independent Roman Catholic school in Weybridge in Surrey, followed by the University of Stirling in Scotland, where he read Business Studies with Languages, and was President of the University Conservative Association in 1991.

After graduation, Kawczynski became an international account manager in the telecommunications industry, a position he held for ten years.

Parliamentary career

Kawczynski first stood for Parliament in the 2001 general election for Ealing Southall and came a distant second with 18% of the vote. However, he won the seat for Shrewsbury and Atcham at the 2005 general election, succeeding Labour’s Paul Marsden with 37.7% of the vote, compared to 34.1% for Labour and 22.8% for the Liberal Democrats. He was re-elected at the 2010 general election with 43.9% of the vote, compared to 29.0% for the Liberal Democrats in second.

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 is recorded as having attended only 12.5 per cent of all Justice Select Committee meetings and 31.3 per cent of International Development Select Committee meetings during the last Parliamentary session. Kawczynski no longer sits on any Select Committees following his failure to gain election to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

Kawczynski is a keen supporter of fox hunting and advocates keeping the First Past the Post voting system. 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 stated that he believes an abortion limit of 24 weeks is incompatible with the kind of "Christian society" he wishes to live in. He also voted against a House of Lords amendment to abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel under common law. The abortion time limit vote failed and the blasphemy vote passed.

In 2006, Kawczynski briefly appeared on the "Better Know A District" segment of American satirical programme The Colbert Report. 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".Walker, Tim (19 May 2009). . The Telegraph.

In 2010 Kawczynski published a book called Seeking Gaddafi about Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Political blogger Paul Staines (aka, the blogger Guido Fawkes) has accused Kawczynski of using 5,000 word essay submissions by interviewees for an unpaid internship as the basis of his book commenting on the inconsistency of style throughout the book and similarity of chapter titles to the submitted essays. When Kawczynski later advertised another unpaid internship for his new book entitled Saudi Arabia, Staines claimed that this was "nothing but a con."

In September 2012 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the new Secretary of State for Wales, David Jones MP.

He is a member of the socially conservative Cornerstone Group, and is a vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Poland.. Conservative Friends of Poland. Retrieved 2 July 2013. At , Kawczynski is believed to be the tallest MP ever to sit in Parliament.. BBC News. 21 June 2005.