Polish Anti-defamation Law

Debate between Peter Grant and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Mr Gapes, it is a privilege to be able to contribute to the debate. I cannot go as far as to say it is a pleasure, because it is a difficult debate to take part in and to listen to. The testimonies we have heard will, I hope, continue to be heard in hundreds of years’ time because there is a story here that we cannot afford to forget.

I commend the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) on securing the debate and on his contribution, and also the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who followed him. It strikes me that we have two people here whose family histories bear remarkable similarities and yet who have used their personal stories to come to completely different conclusions about how we should address what is clearly a serious concern for those in Poland and for many other people. That might be something we should point to—that it is possible for people, with great sincerity and integrity, to come to opposing views about something and be able to air those views such that they disagree without having to get disagreeable. That is too often lacking.

We should also bear in mind that we have heard stories about people—only about a tiny fraction of such people—who did what they believed to be right, knowing that it would cost them their lives. How often in this place does a whole system try to get people to do what it hopes might be politically advantageous to their careers, regardless of what they, in conscience, believe to be right? A clear example has been set by some of the stories we have heard today. It does no harm for Members of Parliament occasionally to look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether we would risk not our lives but our popularity within our party to stand up and speak and vote for what is right.

An earlier speaker said that there was not time in the debate to do justice to the part that the people of Poland and their then Government played in standing against the evil of Nazism. I do not think that the war would have turned out as it did had it not been for the contribution of those people. The truth about many of the things that happen in war gets distorted at the time and continues to be distorted afterwards. We have heard examples of how the Soviet regime tried, and continues to try, to rewrite history completely. I cannot imagine there ever being a time when we will discover that Poland did not play the part it is given credit for. I cannot imagine that the historians will ever find evidence to suggest other than that millions of people in Poland ran horrendous risks and suffered the horrific fate they did to protect friends and neighbours at a time when many other European countries were turning in on themselves. Poland stood against the holocaust at a time when, shamefully, few other countries in occupied Europe, and even in non-occupied Europe, were prepared to do so. I see that as an accepted historical fact and I cannot imagine a time ever coming when it is challenged.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I want to get on the record something with which I hope he agrees. Poland welcomed more than 3 million Jews to live there before the outbreak of war, and the two communities co-operated and got on very well. I am proud of how the Poles accepted so many outsiders into their country and of the harmonious society they created. It was the travesty of war that created the problems.

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention. Clearly, I cannot speak with the hon. Gentleman’s authority about the detailed history of Poland, but I certainly look at it from a common-sense point of view. Surely the Jewish population in Poland was so big because Jews were comfortable there and felt that they would be treated better than in many other countries in Europe.

I find offensive any suggestion that the Polish Government, either directly or indirectly, collaborated with the Nazis, and I well understand why the people of Poland today find such suggestions greatly offensive. However, I am not convinced that criminalising the actions of a newspaper or a television programme is the right way to deal with that offence. That is where the nub lies. I think we must accept that Polish citizens will have collaborated in crimes against humanity—a tiny minority of the Polish population—as, if the full facts were known, there would no doubt have been Scots who collaborated, just as there were Scots who risked their lives to help. People of all nationalities committed acts of great courage, and people of all nationalities will have collaborated in acts of great evil. If we lose sight of that, we do a disservice to all those who risked and lost their lives.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Peter Grant and Daniel Kawczynski

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I suspect that I have much more confidence in the world-class quality of the food and drink that is produced in Scotland than the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that Scotch whisky really depends on the Foreign Secretary to become a world leader, and I do not believe that the world-class food and drink that we produce in Scotland really depends on gunboat diplomacy to make people throughout the world understand. What it does depend on is barrier-free access to markets, and it is a bit rich for those who support the removal of our barrier-free access to the biggest single market on the planet to claim to have a monopoly of wisdom about how to develop our international trade.

Let me say once again that I do not accept the argument that the sole purpose of foreign policy is to benefit wealthy investors and bankers in these islands. The most important part of the foreign policy of any developed and wealthy nation is to ensure that its wealth is distributed so that terrorist attacks such as the ones that we have seen in Egypt recently, and the starvation that takes the lives of thousands of children every day, become things of the past. If I have to pay a wee bit more income tax, or any other tax, to make that happen, I for one am more than happy to dip into my pocket.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the intervention in Yemen in a castigating way. Will he at least acknowledge that many Arab countries are involved in the war in Yemen, and that they are trying to avert a humanitarian crisis and deal with the difficulties in that country that are a direct result of Iranian intervention in support of the Houthi rebels? The situation is much more complicated than the hon. Gentleman is trying to suggest.

[Peter Grant]

I entirely agree that it is more complicated than it is often presented as being. I have not said that Iran is entirely innocent, but Iran is not buying £2 billion-worth of weapons of war from the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia is. Saudi Arabia stands accused of war crimes. Until those allegations are investigated, I do not think that we should be selling weapons to those who may be committing crimes of mass murder, and I do not consider the question of whether or not they are using our weapons to commit those crimes to be relevant.

When I looked at the timetable for our Budget debate, I saw “Monday: global Britain”, and thought, “That’s not going to take very long, is it?” The fact is that even the Government’s own misguided ambitions for Britain’s place in the world, which I believe are still based on the fanciful belief that we are somehow entitled to retain an empire and colonies, rather than a simple acknowledgement that the world has moved on since the days when any nation could claim the right to colonise any other nation—

Anglo-Polish Relations

Debate between Peter Grant and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am going to make some progress, but then I will give way.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is of course correct, and that is why the Polish war memorial is important. Such visible signs of the contribution of Poles to the United Kingdom are important, because we must explain to younger generations why so many Poles are here. Many are here because they came to continue the fight against fascism, and then stayed here as part of the community. No one accentuates the importance of that better than Senator Anders, whom I am sure the hon. Member for Ealing North has met. She is the daughter of the esteemed General Władysław Anders, who was an important figure for Poland. Not only is she the senator for Suwalki area, where British troops are deployed at the moment, but she has been appointed as a special roving ambassador to engage with the Polish diaspora around the world and commemorate and recognise their contributions to their host nations. I pay tribute to her, because Poland needs recognition for its unique contributions.

An area of dissent in the European Union is refugees. Poland has recently taken more than 1.3 million refugees from the terrible fighting in Ukraine. My Polish friends tell me that there are now 1.3 million Ukrainians in employment in Poland, but some figures put the number of Ukrainians in Poland as high as 1.5 million or 1.7 million. On my summer holidays to the Polish seaside resort of Sopot, where I go every year, I see for myself the huge number of Ukrainians working in restaurants and cafés, and throughout the community.

Poland is not demanding a resettlement of those Ukrainians or any special help from the European Union in dealing with those huge numbers of refugees streaming across her border. In fact, Poland has already done a great deal to help and support those refugees in escaping the fighting and difficulties they have experienced in Ukraine, yet Germany and the European Union are now talking about sanctions against Poland for not taking the requisite number of Syrian refugees. I find that dangerous and frightening, quite frankly. We have a history of welcoming refugees to our nation, and we are proud of that, but that decision must come from the grassroots. It must bubble up from society, as happens in our country.

What frightens me is the idea that the European Union can somehow unilaterally dictate an allocation of certain types of refugee to be distributed to Poland, against the express wishes of the democratically elected Polish Government. The issue is clearly polarising, but we must respect the will of the Polish Government. I consider one European country or the European Union itself threatening sanctions to be blackmail and intimidation, and the United Kingdom must support Poland on the issue. The referendum showed that no matter what happens with the European Union, we believe in the supremacy of individual sovereign nations and their ability to be directly accountable to their people for all policies that they implement.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the same defence could be made of countries such as Jordan and Turkey, which have already accepted far more refugees than they can sustainably look after? If the United Kingdom was prepared to take a decent number of refugees from Syria and Iraq, instead of putting pressure on countries in the middle east to take more, would there not be less pressure on places such as Poland, which is already catering for refugees from other parts of the world?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I do not really want to get into a debate about our domestic immigration policies. I am proud that the United Kingdom has provided more money than any country apart from America for refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon, but of course we can do more.

A key point that I want to raise with the Minister is that because we are leaving the European Union, people say to me, “What’s it got to do with you? Your power and influence in the European Union is bound to wane over the next two years, and then you will have no influence at all.” One Conservative MP said to me today, “You’re blowing in the wind here; we will not have any influence in the European Union.” But the fact remains that we will of course continue to have influence. As a major European power, security, stability, peace and confidence on the European continent is vital to us, and we must continue to engage and support countries such as Poland on this issue and others.

I say to the Minister that when Germany behaves in such a way, it needs to be called out for double standards. On the one hand Germany talks about the unique importance of solidarity within the European Union, and says that there has to be redistribution of refugees around the whole of the European Union, but on the other hand it implements policies that go completely against that concept. One example is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline—a massive project to build an undersea gas and oil pipeline from St Petersburg to Germany, completely bypassing the whole of central and eastern Europe. We all understand and appreciate the importance of energy security for all our NATO partners in central and eastern Europe. They are building liquefied gas terminals on the Baltic sea and starting to buy more gas from Qatar and the United States of America, but a common energy policy with the Russians is needed. The Russians understand only strength, and any differences between those countries will give Russia increased leverage to turn off the taps or to put pressure on some of those countries if things do not go its way.

I am really disappointed by Germany’s conduct over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and I very much hope that my right hon. Friend and other Ministers will raise the issue with their German counterparts. What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with his German counterpart to highlight concerns about the lack of support for central and eastern Europe on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? As I said, it is vital for our interests that countries in central and eastern Europe and the Baltic states continue to have energy security.

Does my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) still wish to intervene? I was rude not to give way to my constituency neighbour from just across the border in Wales. I give way to him.

Middle East

Debate between Peter Grant and Daniel Kawczynski

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Latha naomh Anndra sona dhuibh—I wish everyone a happy St Andrew’s day. That includes the 90% who claim direct Scottish descent and the 10% who actually have it. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) for coming to the Chamber just in time to give me the correct translation.

For a number of people, tomorrow marks the first day of Advent, which is seen as a time to guzzle chocolates out of an Advent calendar. For a billion or more people around the globe, however, Advent started yesterday. It is a time of reflection and preparation, to celebrate the birth of a convicted and executed criminal, a Palestinian Jewish refugee whose message of peace and good will to all is as desperately needed today as it ever has been at any time in the 2,000 years since he walked the very lands we are speaking about this evening.

I do not pretend to be an expert in any, or indeed all, of the complexities of the middle east, and perhaps it would be better if none of us did, because I suspect that many of the problems in that troubled region have their root cause in the fact that so many experts from other countries thought that they knew what was best for someone else’s country. I approach this with the simple belief that there is right and wrong, morally defensible and morally indefensible, in foreign policy just as there is in everything else. I want to see the United Kingdom adopt a foreign policy that is morally right, rather than simply what is right in terms of political, economic or diplomatic expediency.

Against those measures, it has to be said that the United Kingdom’s record has not been particularly impressive. We have heard talk about our ally Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a ruthless and merciless abuser of the death penalty. We supply that country with weapons and then pretend not to know that those same weapons are being used to kill innocent civilians in Yemen. We honour the Israeli Prime Minister with a full state visit despite the fact that the UK Government’s position is that the Israeli Government are acting against international law by occupying Palestinian territories. We allow weapons and military hardware to be sent to Israel and then pretend not to know that they could be contributing to the deaths of hundreds of innocent women and children in Palestine. We set a cap on the number of desperate refugees we are willing to accept from Syria, but we will set no cap whatsoever on the number of missiles and bombs we are prepared to send there, and we will set no cap on how long that military bombardment will last.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s comments about Saudi Arabia. As I am sure he is aware, his hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins), who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, was with us in Saudi Arabia last week and heard extensive briefings on the campaign in Yemen. I very much hope that the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) will spend time with his hon. Friend to find out about the Saudi perspective on this.

[Peter Grant]

I have no doubt that there is a Saudi story, but that story is not the only one that deserves to be told.

My point is that if we continue to operate a policy in the middle east that is based on the interests of UK citizens, businesses and investors, to the exclusion of all else, we will continue to get it wrong.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Peter Grant and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I have always been of the view that people’s nationality should be defined by where they want to go, rather than where they came from, but that definition is not widely accepted.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

I will take one more intervention, but I will then have to move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the concerns of those in the eastern European diaspora in this country. Being of Polish origin, I have engaged with many of them. It is true that many such communities are concerned about the referendum and its ramifications for them. I very much hope that he will join me in saying to the eastern European diaspora that this is not about them, but about our position in Europe.

[Peter Grant]

I am delighted to do so. I am pleased to confirm, as would all my hon. Friends, that from speaking to people from eastern Europe and other people from beyond the shores of the United Kingdom during the Scottish independence referendum, I know that they not only welcomed the fact they were allowed to take part, but felt more Scots—more British, if hon. Members like—as a result of being allowed to take part. However they eventually voted, the fact that they were allowed to partake in such a massive event for our nation meant that they identified even more strongly with our nation afterwards than they had before.

To conclude, now that it very much looks as though the referendum will happen, we must make sure that we get it right. It has got to be fair and seen to be fair. That means that the funding of the different sides must be fair; it does not necessarily have to be equal, but it has to be fair, open and transparent. We have to know who is paying in the money, and therefore who is pulling the strings of the different campaigns. The referendum must be conducted in such as way that everyone who resides in these islands—even those who, it appears, are likely to be denied a vote—feels that they are still entitled to stay here and can accept the result. The only thing that would be worse than holding a referendum would be to hold one that was seen to be rigged or unfair.