President Trump: State Visit

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

Many people have come here who have been less welcome than others; that is absolutely true. We have had people here who were very unsavoury characters—not from the United States, as it happens—but we certainly should not try to imitate the errors of the past. We should set an example by making sure that we do not make those mistakes again.

As I said, this is a situation of grave concern, and the Prime Minister is in an awkward position. Since the seventh day of Mr Trump’s presidency, things have got far worse. We are now in the 31st day of his presidency. We have seen General Michael Flynn being forced out of office because he could not tell the truth about relations with Russia and could have been a victim of blackmail. That is a very worrying situation, and we know that allegations were made during the election campaign, and as a presidential candidate Trump made an appeal encouraging people to hack the accounts of Hillary Clinton. There may well be a case coming up that will show that the position of the President will be difficult to sustain if he himself is open to blackmail. We also know of the confrontation that took place during the election campaign involving President Obama, who warned that that eventuality was a likely outcome.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

A higher percentage of constituents from Brighton signed the petition than from any other constituency and I am proud to represent them today. Many of them have raised not only Trump’s misogyny and racism but his contempt for basic climate science. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that someone who has shown such effrontery to basic climate science is another reason he should not come here on a state visit?

[Paul Flynn]

It is extraordinary that Trump, from the cavernous depths of his scientific ignorance, is prepared to challenge the conclusions of 97% of the world experts on this matter. He makes a bad science conspiracy theory conclusion when, apart from the nuclear issue, climate change is the most important issue of our time.

On the nuclear issue, Trump is almost unique in that he believes in nuclear proliferation. He is trying to persuade countries such as South Korea and Japan to acquire their own nuclear weapons. We know that the danger of nuclear war exists not because of the malice of nations but because of the likelihood that it will come by accident—by human error, or by a technical failure similar to the one that happened when one of our missiles headed in the wrong direction towards the United States in a recent test. The more nations that have nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that that problem will emerge and we could be plunged into a nuclear war.

The question that the petitioners put as a main point is the situation as far as Her Majesty is concerned. A former permanent secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord Ricketts, reacted to the invitation by arguing:

“There is no precedent for a US president paying a state visit to this country in their first year”

of office. He is quite right. He said:

“It would have been far wiser to wait to see what sort of president he would turn out to be before advising the Queen to invite him.”

The Queen has been put in a very difficult position, and for that reason alone we should consider this petition, and the Government should consider it, with a bit of humility, to decide what action should take place. They should change the invitation to one for a visit rather than one for a state visit.