President Trump: State Visit Debate
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Andrew Turner
Main Page: Andrew Turner (Conservative - Isle of Wight)Department Debates - View all Andrew Turner's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
President Trump: State Visit
Andrew Turner Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)
Order. The next speaker is Mr Alistair Carmichael. Could we now cut speeches down to four minutes?
Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)
Order. We have reached 6.45 pm, so we must move on to Liam Byrne.
Dawn Butler
I will conclude to give my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) time to speak. I just want to say that the whole world is watching the decision that we make in Parliament, and we cannot be on the wrong side of history.
Alex Salmond
That is not for the Minister to decide. Mr Turner, you are in the Chair, not the Minister.
Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)
Order. That is not eligible as a point of order. Sit down, Mr Salmond. Go on, Minister.
Sir Alan Duncan
Thank you, Mr Turner.
I was talking about the prospect of the President addressing both Houses of Parliament. Comment on whether that might happen has run completely ahead of itself. The simple fact is that no request for any parliamentary event to take place has been received from Washington. The question of addressing a meeting of Parliament has never even been mentioned. Any discussion or judgment of that possibility is therefore purely speculative.
Within the views that have been expressed about the appropriateness of a state visit from the President, there lurks a fundamental principle that Members of this House should consider very seriously—the principle of freedom of speech. President Trump was democratically elected by the American people under their own constitutional system. To have strong views about him is one matter, but to translate a difference of opinion into a demand to ban him is quite another.
Given the understandable questions on certain policy stances that arise on any change of Government, it is prudent for us to work closely alongside the United States as the new Administration chart their course. We have already seen the importance of that engagement: the Prime Minister’s early meeting with the President has elicited key commitments on NATO, which were echoed by the vice-president in Munich on Saturday, and has laid the groundwork to establish a swift post-Brexit free trade agreement. Further constructive engagement will be helped by a state visit.
In February 1917, a century ago, The Spectator published its view on the US and the UK:
“It would be easy to write down a hundred reasons why unclouded friendship and moral co-operation between the United States and Britain are a benefit to the world, and why an interruption of such relations is a detriment to progress and a disease world-wide in its effects.”