Donald Trump

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I must make a declaration: I am the only Member of Parliament who can claim to represent the good people of New York—New York in Lincolnshire. When those seeking religious sanctuary in the 1600s reached the shores of what we now know as the United States of America, that tiny hamlet in my constituency lent its name to a patch of land that grew to be one of the greatest cities on the planet. The good people of the original New York—all 150 or so of them—wear that honour lightly.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Ted Cruz has launched a vicious attack on the people of New York, saying they are cosmopolitan—[Laughter]—so I hope my hon. Friend will stand up for the people of New York. Will she note, as I have, having looked at the map, that not a single person from Lincolnshire has signed the petition to ban Donald Trump?

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend reaches my point before me. I promise to deal with New York values at the end of my speech.

I turn, as I must, to Mr Trump. His comments about Muslims are wrong. His policy to close borders, if he is elected as President, is bonkers. If he met one or two of my constituents in one of the many excellent pubs in my constituency, they may well tell him that he is a wazzock for dealing with the issue in that way. I sense that my constituents, whether in New York or Tetney, in Minting or Mablethorpe, feel that their values are more than robust enough to survive anything that Mr Trump may say. We in Lincolnshire—in fact, we in the United Kingdom—should have enough confidence in our values to allow him to say whatever he wants in New York, New York, or in New York, Lincolnshire, or anywhere else in the world, because our British values are stronger than some among us here today appear to fear.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Does the hon. Lady understand that it is all very well for us to say, “We feel strong and we can withstand this, so you can criticise and offend and we will stand up to you,” but she and I are not Muslims living in a country where Islamophobia is already rising? Comments such as his, from someone who has such influence over so many people and is getting so much media exposure, can only harm not people like us, but those on the streets who feel vulnerable. They do not feel as strong as she and her constituents claim to feel.

[Victoria Atkins]

I can only give the hon. Lady reassurance. As someone who used to prosecute criminals for a living before I came to this place, any defendant who tried that on in court would get very short shrift from me and, I am sure, from the jury. We must not allow people who behave in such a disgraceful way—criminals who beat up other people on the basis of their religion or beliefs—to remove themselves from that by blaming someone on a different continent. If they beat up a Muslim on the streets of Britain, that is their responsibility and no one else’s.

One of the values that best sums up our country is the freedom to exchange thoughts and ideas within the law—the freedom to persuade or rebut; the freedom to inspire or eviscerate in argument; the freedom to speak; and the freedom to listen. That freedom is not always comfortable. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) referred to the rising problem in some of our universities about allowing free speech and providing safe spaces for it, for fear that people may be offended, but the freedom of speech must mean that we will sometimes be offended. It means allowing those whose views we hold to be unedifying to speak their minds. Crucially, it also means the freedom to reply—to say, “No, Donald Trump, you are wrong, and you are wrong for the following reasons.” That freedom was hard won over centuries and it must be defended jealously, because it goes to the essence of democracy and the rule of law.

Opposition Members may rely on the argument of consistency—indeed, one Member said, “So-and-so has been excluded, so Mr Trump must be excluded.” Let us remind ourselves of the threshold that must be met for that to happen. The Home Secretary must conclude that the person’s presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good.

The House of Commons Library helpfully provided a briefing paper for the debate, which gives 14 examples of people who had been excluded by Labour Home Secretaries by May 2009. Of those, 10 were considered to be engaging in “unacceptable behaviour” by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence. Nine were considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour in order to provoke others to commit terrorist acts or serious crimes. Five were considered to be fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence in the UK and one had spent 30 years in prison for killing four soldiers and a four-year-old girl.

I ask a simple question of those who would ban Donald Trump: are they really saying that his conduct, no matter how offensive it may be, meets those criteria? If Donald Trump poses any question for us as a country, the answer is not to fuel his publicity by talking about banning him—incidentally, this debate is doing that nicely—but to rebut his arguments. The answer is to challenge him in a robust, democratic argument on why he is wrong about the contribution of American and British Muslims to this country.

[Tulip Siddiq]

The hon. Lady cites 14 cases of people who have been banned. Has she considered the 84 hate preachers who are banned? If so, she will see that there is a striking resemblance between what was said by Donald Trump and by two bloggers who were banned two years ago by the Conservative Home Secretary. Will she comment on whether the same should apply to Donald Trump?

[Victoria Atkins]

Forgive me, but I have already answered that. The House of Commons Library paper, as I think most people would accept, is a neutral document and those were its examples. I used every single one of the 14 examples given, and they are in a very different category from what Donald Trump has said on this issue and many others.

Finally, I will deal with the point raised by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). In a recent Republican debate, Ted Cruz accused Donald Trump of having New York values. Both of them would be enriched by the values of my constituents in New York and beyond, who are hard-working, generous and welcoming. They may be rather bemused that we are fuelling that man’s publicity machine by having the debate at all.