Marcus Jones
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for securing this important debate, and I thank hon. Members for their many and varied contributions. This has been an extremely good and constructive debate.
The Polish contribution to the United Kingdom is absolutely woven into the fabric of our society. Even when we check the weather on the BBC, we see Tomasz Schafernaker, who, like my hon. Friend, was born in Poland. When we go into our towns and on to our high streets, we visit Tesco and Marks and Spencer—both companies founded by Polish Jewish immigrants to Britain. We should welcome the contribution that Poles have made and continue to make to our country. This is a long and proud relationship, born out of both adversity and entrepreneurial desire.
We have Poland to thank for one of our most famous medieval kings, King Canute the Great, who was the son of a Polish princess and the nephew of Boleslaw I of Poland. We have King Canute, ruler of Denmark, Norway and England, to thank for bringing comparative peace and prosperity to these isles at the time. By the 16th century, we imported most of our grain from Poland, and Polish merchants and diplomats came regularly to London. Poles were such an established part of everyday life by that time that even Shakespeare thought they were worth a mention in “Hamlet”. By 1608 Polish craftsmen helped the first permanent English settlement in the Americas—Jamestown—to thrive.
We can find evidence of the early Polish contribution to British society right here in London. After the battle of Vienna in 1683, a pub in London’s Soho was named after the King of Poland, and soon afterwards the street on which it stands was named Poland Street—it exists to this very day. Britain has been a place of sanctuary for Poles for centuries, including in the 19th century, when many Poles fled the Russian empire in search of political sanctuary. That cemented Britain’s place as one of safety for Poles, as well as many other communities, which continues today.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, thousands of Polish men and women made a crucial contribution to the allied war effort, which directly led to the formation of the Polish British community as it exists today. In 1940, with the fall of France, the exiled Polish President, Prime Minister and Government all transferred to London, along with the first wave of at least 20,000 soldiers and airmen. Poles formed the fourth-largest allied armed force after the Soviets, the Americans and the combined troops of the British empire. In Poland’s time of despair, they did not give up; they came to Britain in their thousands, to help to fight for the future of our continent. Poles were the largest group of non-British personnel in the RAF during the battle of Britain, as a number of hon. Members have said, and the fearless 303 Polish Squadron was the highest-scoring RAF Hurricane squadron in that battle.
Dr Huq
May I recommend to the Minister the book “Wira of Warsaw: Memoirs of a Girl Soldier”, by my constituent George Szlachetko, about his mother Danuta, who was part of the underground resistance? She was a teenage girl soldier in the war. I warmly recommend that book, which I went to the launch of recently.
Mr Jones
I thank the hon. Lady for that recommendation. With the summer coming up, that may well be a good read. I will come in a moment to a very important point about the very situation that she mentions, but first I would like to continue on the theme of the battle of Britain.
Bramcote Airbase, which was on the edge of my constituency, Nuneaton, is where the RAF was responsible for training all the bomber aircrew for Polish forces in 1940, with four Polish bomber squadrons formed there. In fact, there was an air crash around that time; in the cemetery at Nuneaton, there are Polish airmen buried along with German and British airmen. We still commemorate those losses every year, to make sure that we remember the contribution that the Polish made at that time.
Bob Stewart
The reason why the Royal Air Force had so many Polish pilots was that they were extremely well trained and had fought for us in the battle of France before the battle of Britain. They were very well trained and we were very grateful that they were with us.
Mr Jones
I defer to my hon. Friend’s superior knowledge. He knows far more about such matters than I do. What he said is borne out by the fact that the Polish squadron was the highest scoring RAF Hurricane squadron in the battle of Britain.
It was not just in the air that the Poles excelled in the second world war. Girls and women today would do well to look at the contribution of one of the Special Operations Executive’s most daring operatives, Christine Granville, otherwise known by her Polish name, Krystyna Skarbek. She proved that being brave and fighting for one’s beliefs is not just a male preserve. On the battlefields, the Polish army, under British High Command, was instrumental at the battle of Monte Cassino, which was mentioned by colleagues, and at the battle of Arnhem, among many others. Perhaps most importantly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham and several other colleagues highlighted, we have Polish cryptographers to thank for cracking the early versions of the Enigma machine. That laid the foundations for subsequent British successes in deciphering German military signals, which proved a key factor in many allied successes during the war.
Poles were with us in our darkest hour, as they were with thousands of Polish Jews in theirs. More than 6,000 risked their lives to save Jews from the horrors of the holocaust. Poles constitute the largest national group within the “Righteous Among the Nations”, an honour bestowed on recipients by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the holocaust. Considering the harsh punishment that threatened rescuers, it is an extremely impressive number.
To ensure that the murder of millions of Polish Jews is never forgotten, the Department for Communities and Local Government is working with From the Depths to preserve the memory of the holocaust and give a name to those who were murdered, particularly those, including many Poles, who were placed in unmarked graves. That will offer some level of closure to the remaining holocaust survivors—including in Polish communities in this country—who have never known their loved ones’ last resting place. There are an estimated 10,000 sites of mass murder in eastern Europe, with only around 30 commemorated in the past three years. The project we have undertaken will rectify that.
Along with many others in this House and throughout the country, I reacted in absolute horror to the spike in incidents of hate crime following the EU referendum. My colleagues Baroness Williams, the then communities Minister, and Lord Ahmad, the then Minister for Countering Extremism, saw at first hand the effects of such mindless acts when they visited the Polish Social and Cultural Association—POSK—which my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham mentioned earlier in the debate. They met the Polish ambassador, His Excellency Witold Sobków, who I am really pleased to see in the Public Gallery.
I want to make it absolutely clear that we will not tolerate those few individuals who target people because they are different. Our police forces are on alert and have encouraged people who have experienced hate crime to report it to the police. We have zero tolerance for all forms of hate crimes, whichever community they are perpetrated against. Just as Polish men and women stood by us during the second world war, we will stand by those who have come more recently and who have contributed to our national life.
Our communities must be open, tolerant and welcoming. I am pleased to say that my Department is working with Near Neighbours to fund projects that promote integration and support social action—projects like the one in Birmingham run by the Polish Expats Association, which is holding a series of events to promote Polish music and culture, along with that of other communities. The project will also hold fundraising events to help the homeless community in Birmingham. I am pleased that, in his capacity as chair of the all-party group on Poland, my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham will meet my departmental colleague, Lord Bourne, to discuss how we can continue to counter hate crime and promote integration in communities throughout the country.
Today, there are thousands upon thousands of Polish citizens and people of Polish origin making a difference to the UK. My hon. Friend and others have highlighted their vital contribution. That is nowhere more true than in the NHS, where, according to the figures we have from the Department of Health, more than 6,700 Poles work.
Andy Slaughter
I am glad that the Minister mentioned the NHS. He will no doubt have seen the article in today’s Daily Telegraph by the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, in which he wrote:
“It should be completely uncontroversial to provide early reassurance to international NHS employees about their continued welcome in this country.”
Will the Minister address the concerns I raised about employees and students, and about the reassurance we are giving to Polish nationals in this country about whether they can stay?
Mr Jones
The Cabinet Office, the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued an extremely important statement on 12 July. If the hon. Gentleman reads that statement carefully, he will see that it provides significant reassurance to members of the Polish community, and quite rightly so.
Poles are known for their entrepreneurial skills. In 2014, it was estimated that 22,000 companies had been set up by Polish-born entrepreneurs, with a further 65,000 registered as self-employed. Poles are employed throughout our society, including right here in this very House. Polish people have enriched our country, and while the UK remains in the EU, all its citizens continue to enjoy the rights and status they had prior to the referendum. The Government want to be able to guarantee the legal status of EU nationals who are living in the UK, and we are confident that we will be able to do so, but we must also win the same rights for British nationals living in European countries. It will be an early negotiating objective for the Government to achieve those things together. Some Members have expressed concerns that that might not be a high priority for the Government, but I hope I can reassure them that it will.
Mr Jones
I have been clear in demonstrating that the Government absolutely want to ensure that we guarantee the status of the EU nationals living in the UK.
In conclusion, I am sure that all Members present, as well as the people in the Public Gallery, will wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham for bringing this important debate before the House. We have always welcomed law-abiding migrants to this country, and the contribution of the Polish community to this country should absolutely be celebrated.