Donald Trump
Debate between Chris Stephens and Keir Starmer(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Keir Starmer
We have to be very careful about equating the views of Members of this House who call for a ban with the views of Donald Trump. For me, his views edge towards treating a whole community as a suspect community. Of course, it may be that he does not think that of each and every member of the Muslim community, but this has happened before in many other contexts where a whole community has been treated as a suspect community. We stood against it in the past, and we should stand against it now.
Chris Stephens
The hon. and learned Gentleman comes to this debate with considerable and learned legal experience. This debate can be tied up on whether Mr Trump’s comments were, as has been described, outrageous or simply hate speech, as some of us believe. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, others have been banned from this country for saying exactly the same things.
Keir Starmer
I will address that specific issue in a moment. Obviously, one of the measures available to the Government is to ban any individual from entering the UK. That power has been used by successive Home Secretaries on a number of occasions, and many examples have been put before the House this afternoon. It is a power that should be applied equally to everybody, whatever their wealth or power. That is important. I do not hold the view that presidential candidates fall within a special category; they should be judged in the same way as everybody else, on the basis of what they have said or done.