Changes in US Immigration Policy

Simon Burns Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend speaks very eloquently. I noticed that the Prime Minister told President Erdogan that human rights and the rule of law were incredibly important. The same thing applies to President Trump. All of us have to make that clear, and it is good to see in the Chamber the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who—I do not want to cause him trouble—issued a good statement earlier today. He is nodding.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that in one way the Executive order is not a surprise, because it was a key plank of President Trump’s election campaign last year? Simply because it was an election pledge does not in any way suggest that it is right.

[Edward Miliband]

That is completely right. The person who coined the phrase that people were taking Mr Trump seriously but not literally has turned out to be wrong, because the President is acting literally. Whether he talked about this in the campaign or not, we all have a responsibility to decide both how we respond and the strength of our response. I will come on to why it is important that we speak up.

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[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

May I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) on securing this timely and important debate? It is with a degree of sadness that we have to have it in the first place.

America has a proud tradition of being a nation of immigrants. People fleeing torture and persecution from around the world have sought refuge on the shores of the United States and, metaphorically, I suspect that Miss Liberty is holding her head in shame because of the events of last Friday. The Executive order is shameful and immoral, but, as I said in my intervention on the right hon. Gentleman, it should not come as a surprise to any of us. Throughout the campaign last year, President Trump made it plain that, as well as building a wall, he was going to ban all Muslims—not security threats, but a religious grouping. It was rather frightening, if one looked at the audiences to which he made that pledge throughout the United States—north, south, east and west—to see the reaction of the crowds. That shows us that not only is he honouring his election pledge, but he is playing to a gallery of people who are prejudiced in favour of this sort of action. That is very sad, because it will not achieve what I assume he wants it to achieve, apart from gaining a potential narrow party political electoral advantage with a core base.

America should be stronger together, and it should be building bridges, not walls. The Executive order will alienate moderate Arabs and radicalise further those on the radical wing of the Arab world, at a time when we should be building bridges to enable us to expose the evil and violence of some of the terrorists who come out of the middle east, and working with moderate Arabs to end the evil threat not only to us, but to moderate Arab opinion in the middle east.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Simon Burns]

No; I do not have time. The Executive order will result in further radicalisation. It will do the exact opposite of what some people think it will do. It will not make the United States any safer; it will make it a more dangerous place. That is an irony, and it is unacceptable.

I take issue with some of the comments I have heard during this debate and during the statement, in that I think it is absolutely right that the British Government continue the work of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to build bridges with President Trump so that we can, through engagement, seek to persuade him and to minimise or reduce the danger of his more outrageous policies. We can do that only by being a candid friend, but we have to be a candid friend.

I believe that very little would be achieved by cancelling a state visit to which the invitation has already been extended and accepted. It is part of a process of seeking to engage, encourage and persuade. There is, however, one area at which we should look very carefully. Some will remember that in 1982 or 1983, President Ronald Reagan had a state visit to this country, but it was decided by the then Thatcher Government that there should not be an address to the joint Houses of Parliament.

Similarly, I remember, as a Member of this House, the state visit of President George W. Bush. Apart from a sojourn in Durham at Trimdon Labour club, I believe, for lunch with the then Prime Minister, all President Bush did was to travel in the Beast from Buckingham Palace to No. 10 and back again. There was no address to the joint Houses of Parliament. In the circumstances, I think that that was rather wise. We and the Government —and you, Mr Speaker—should think very carefully before considering such an address as part of the programme for a state visit by President Trump, because it might not go as well as everyone would naturally expect.

In conclusion, this ban is nasty, it is immoral and it will not succeed. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and his deputy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan), as well as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, have a key role to play because the ban will last for 90 days, which in theory means that it is part time and transitory. I am not convinced that that will be the case in reality. The challenge for the Government is to do all they can to influence President Trump about its counterproductive nature and the danger that it will pose in radicalising rather than pacifying those who espouse radical extremist thinking; and to persuade him that there are better ways than this very blunt weapon to pursue a policy of reconciliation. The best way to do so is to communicate and negotiate with the reasonable elements in the middle east and work together to overcome the threat to this country, the United States and elsewhere.

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[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I should like to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) on securing this debate. I agreed with the entirety of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North’s speech and with much of what the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon said, although I disagree with his more fulsome praise for the actions of this Government over the past 48 hours. I would take issue with that, but I was very moved by his personal experiences and his personal reaction to the ban. I commend his speech and his efforts on this matter.

I want to return to a point made when the Foreign Secretary was taking questions earlier, following his statement, about the importance of recognising that this is a Muslim ban. Other Members have made that point as well, but it is so important that we send a clear message and that we call it exactly what it is. We seem to be living in an era when the truth and facts are challenged at every moment. I was struck by a recent film, “Denial”, which is the story of how Professor Deborah Lipstadt had to take the holocaust denier, David Irving, to court in order to prove the truth about the holocaust. It really focuses the mind on the importance of speaking up for the truth at every moment and calling out those who deny it.

Many people are trying to divert us from the truth by saying that this Executive order is about nationality. It is not about nationality. The President of the United States made it very clear in his campaign that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Rudy Giuliani was on Fox News recently—not one of those organisations that the President likes to accuse of distributing “fake news”—saying that he had been asked by the President of the United States to put together a commission to work out how to enact the Muslim ban legally. These people are not hiding in plain sight; they are telling us in clear words on national television that is broadcast around the world exactly what they believe, exactly what they stand for and exactly who they are.

[Sir Simon Burns]

Does the hon. Lady also remember that, during the Democratic national convention in late July last year, Trump was tacky enough to attack a Muslim gold star mother whose son had died in the service of the US army protecting his fellow soldiers from certain death?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that important point and reminding us about Humayun Khan. In normal circumstances, that action would have been enough to ensure that someone lost an election and received the opprobrium of everyone, everywhere. It is a sign of what we have come to that that did not happen.

It is important that we stick to our principles and that we hold the line in relation to the truth, because that is what is at stake here. Everyone in this House must be unashamed and unafraid to do that. We have to hold the line when people scream at us on social media that things are not as they seem and that the President suddenly changed his mind and does not think that it is a Muslim ban. We also have to hold the line when people try to divert us and when the “alt-right” go on the marches they are now so famous for. We have to hold on to the truth.