Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The financial threshold for family visas is causing particular distress to one of my constituents, who cannot work the hours required because she is a carer for her vulnerable child. This means my constituent is living without her husband and the child is living without his father. Does the Minister acknowledge that he is at risk of creating a generation of children whose only contact with one of their parents will be via Skype?

[James Brokenshire]

No, I do not accept that, and these issues of the welfare of the child are absolutely part of our consideration. This matter was considered by the Court of Appeal and our approach was firmly upheld. When the threshold was set in November 2011, the MAC gave the lower threshold of £18,600 but also advised that the threshold could have been set as high as £25,700. The Government reflected and set the current level, which has been upheld by the courts.

Donald Trump

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The arguments over why we are having this debate have already been articulated by the speakers who came before me—my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). I want to discuss why this online petition, which has been signed by 3,000 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn, has evoked such emotion. Is it because Donald Trump’s comments have tarnished the entire Muslim community with the views of a small group of extremists whose views ordinary Muslims absolutely condemn? Is it because the world’s largest economy might be excluding the world’s second largest religious community—more than 1.6 billion people? Or is it because people in this country are proud of the long history we have of welcoming immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers?

People often say that the public are apathetic about politics. This petition, signed by nearly 600,000 people, shows that when people feel a sense of justice—when they feel that we need to stop a poisonous, corrosive man from entering our country—they will act in good conscience. We are not talking about just any man. This is a man with an extremely high profile who has been involved in the American show-business industry for years—a man who is now interviewing for the most important job in the world. His words are not comical. His words are not funny. His words are poisonous and risk inflaming tensions between vulnerable communities. Let me make one thing clear: we have legislation in our country to ensure that we do not let people who are not conducive to the public good enter. My hon. Friend outlined some of the people the Home Office has banned from entering this country.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

You are talking about a candidate for the presidency of the United States. It is up to the American people to decide whether his views are objectionable, not you guys.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that he has to address the Chamber through the Chair. I have no view on this matter whatever, as he will appreciate.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I think the question has been answered for the hon. Gentleman.

I looked at the cases of the 84 hate preachers who have not been allowed into the country. I want to highlight the case of a female blogger—I will not name her, but hon. Members are welcome to look her up—who was banned from entering our country. I looked at the rhetoric she used. Her crime was to equate the views of the entire Muslim population with those of a handful of extremists. The Home Office spokesperson said that she was not allowed into the country because:

“We condemn all those whose behaviours and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form.”

Her views and those of Donald Trump, who thinks that Muslims are all the same, are strikingly similar. They use very similar words. Will we apply our legislation equally to everyone or will we make exceptions for billionaire politicians, even when their words clearly fall short of the Home Office guidance?

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady said that she does not want any exceptions, but I have heard large number of my constituents make similar remarks to those of Donald Trump. She may disagree with them, but lots of my constituents agree with what Donald Trump said, whether I like it or not. Does she think that they should be expelled from the country as a result of their views? If not, what is the difference?

[Tulip Siddiq]

The hon. Gentleman should think carefully about what he just said. That is not the same as our deciding not to let into the country someone whose views fall short of the Home Office guidance.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West outlined Donald Trump’s views about Mexicans and black people. Do not forget that Donald Trump ran a dog-whistle campaign to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate to find out whether the President of America is really American. Imagine what would happen if, in the mother of Parliaments, my colleagues decided to question ethnic minority MPs about whether they are really British.

[Dr Huq]

Is my hon. Friend aware that people find that individual repellent because he is not only racist but homophobic and misogynistic?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention.

When Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump on Fox News to explain why he called some women

“‘fat pigs’, ‘dogs’, ‘slobs’ and ‘disgusting animals’”,

he replied,

“What I say is what I say.”

Is that the kind of man we want in our country?

I thoroughly anticipate the rebuttal that we cannot exclude people merely because they offend us or because we do not like them, but as politicians we have to make difficult decisions. We have to decide when freedom of speech compromises public safety. We are worried about our constituents’ safety. The Centre for the Study of Hate and Extremism pointed out that anti-Muslim crime has increased in line with the rhetoric that Donald Trump used in the last three months of 2015. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West mentioned the homeless Hispanic man who was beaten up by two brothers from south Boston. When they beat him up, they broke his nose and urinated on him. The police report said that one of them justified the act by saying:

“Donald Trump was right—all these illegals need to be deported.”

Donald Trump’s words stoke and inflame hate crime.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I am interested in the point that the hon. Lady seems to be making. To make sure I have understood her correctly, is she laying all the responsibility for the increase in hate crime against Muslims at Donald Trump’s door? Does she not believe that acts of terrorism, such as those in Paris, contributed to it?

[Tulip Siddiq]

Of course, I do not lay all the blame for the increase in hate crime at Donald Trump’s door, but there is a correlation between the words he uses and the increase in hate crime. The point is that his words lead to real crime and violence. That is where I draw the line on freedom of speech.

[Richard Drax]

I do not mean to undermine the hon. Lady’s argument, but many things incite violence. For example, parliamentary regulations can incite violence: policemen have been attacked, and one had his head chopped off. That is not to say that we should shut down debate. All kinds of things incite violence—always by totally irresponsible people.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I do not have much time, so I will wrap up by saying that I draw the line on freedom of speech when it leads to violent ideology being imported, which is what I feel is happening. We have legislation in place to protect the people of Britain from such individuals. It has been used previously to prevent other people from coming into the country, and the same rules should apply to Donald Trump, which is why I feel he should not be given a visa to visit the multicultural country that we are so proud of.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute so early, Sir Roger. When considering my remarks for this debate, I thought that I would be in conflict with the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), but I am pleased to say that that is not the case. However, I want to make one point about exclusion to him, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and the Petitions Committee. When I log on as a Northern Ireland Member and try to access the Committee’s online map, Northern Ireland does not exist. If there is an issue of exclusion, I hope that that can be addressed when the licensing is sorted out with Ordnance Survey.

I am also concerned and apprehensive that the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) is present. He is the chief parliamentary proponent of Hillary Clinton. I wonder whether an intervention will be made to the detriment of Donald Trump.

I never thought I would say it, but I agree wholeheartedly with that dreadful right winger the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). In this debate, it is important that we consider the principles of democracy and of firm and thorough debate. We should stand robustly by our strong, well-principled position, and not run from fear or opposition or the contrary arguments that others may make, be they in this country or abroad.

Members present will know of Lynton Crosby, the political adviser and analyst, who has talked about the dead cat on the table theory. The idea is that, if one is losing an argument or not being referred to at all, throw a dead cat on the table and people will notice. They will stop and the direction of political discourse will change. That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing. It is not a one-off initiative; it marks his campaign entirely. He throws a dead cat on the table, people stop considering what they were considering and stop doing what they were doing. They listen to him and take him seriously.

There will be those today—the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) has done so already—who support Donald Trump’s exclusion. I want to see Donald Trump come to this country and be grilled either by Members of Parliament, by Andrew Neil or one of this country’s great interrogators in public discourse. I want them to challenge him. I want him to get a sense of the fury and the frustration caused by his xenophobic remarks. Let him leave this country feeling that there are better principles than what he has outlined so far. We as a country should be proud of our values, which we would like to see throughout the world. Confront him. Challenge him and confound him into recognising that what he outlines may get headlines and may change the nature of political discourse in the United States or across the world, but it is bad policy and would change the nature, image and reputation of the United States irrevocably from that created by the founding fathers and by those who have built up so much over the past three centuries.

Moving on, the Leader of the Opposition indicates that it would be appropriate to open back channels with Daesh, yet we have members of the same party saying that we should exclude somebody who has erred politically, but who is not a terrorist. For what should we open back channels with Daesh? To negotiate reasonably with somebody who would consider that negotiation in the context of whether to murder someone’s wife or rape her first before cutting off her head?

The same Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor gave succour to terrorists in our United Kingdom over the past 30 years. They supported the IRA murdering citizens in Northern Ireland and murdering our countrymen. To put into context what the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn would have us believe, she thinks it would be appropriate to ban somebody who has erred in political ideology, but who has not erred in law. This person has not promoted terrorism or extremism to the extent that lives have been lost and communities have been damaged or destroyed.

[Tulip Siddiq]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that this country’s legislation should be applied equally to everyone?

[Gavin Robinson]

I think that it does. However, I am setting clear blue water between the support given by the hon. Lady’s leader in years gone by for terrorists who have destroyed, maimed and killed, and somebody who is a ridiculous xenophobe, but who we do not need to promote any further. That is my point.

Some might take a hypocritical stance, such as those north of the border from where we now sit, who are still very much part of our United Kingdom. They lauded and applauded Donald Trump. They invited him to their country, appointed him as an ambassador and regaled him with civic support and adoration because of brass tacks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Lady is quite right: we have the right to criticise. However, I do not think that we should exercise that right on people who are running for elected office in foreign countries. It is for the American people to judge Donald Trump and to hold him to account. It is bad politics and bad judgment to intervene in the electoral processes of other countries and I would wish to do it as little as possible.

[Tulip Siddiq]

The London mayoral candidate from the Labour party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), is of Muslim origin. Under Donald Trump, he would not be allowed to travel to America. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on that?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am delighted to comment on that, on the grounds that the United States makes wonderful provision for the balance of powers. The hon. Lady’s failure to understand that the President of the United States is neither a sovereign nor a despot, but is balanced by Congress and the courts, is a failure to understand the United States. Despite—let’s face it—having had one or two incumbents of the White House who might not have been Mensa candidates, the country has yet succeeded all the way through to today as a bastion of liberty and of economic success.

Today is also Martin Luther King Day and it is worth remembering that he, too, relied on those rights and freedoms. He, too, relied on those rights while he was campaigning to desegregate the University of Alabama. When those students bravely marched in on 11 June 1963, the prevailing opinion was that they should shut up and that their right to freedom of speech should be curtailed. I think that Donald Trump is crazy and has no valid points to make, but I will not be the one to silence his voice.

When I think about what more we should do, I say that we should stand aside and wait for an American to come forward as the great Joseph Welch, the chief counsel for the US army, did. In the 1954 trials, he looked at Senator McCarthy and asked, “Have you no shame, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” For someone to say that to Trump is surely better than for us to legislate on the freedom of expression or of travel of a citizen of that great country, the United States.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the US Supreme Court said:

“The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.”

Of course, there are limits to freedom of expression, even in a libertarian democracy, where statements will cause real harm. However, if we fear all outrageous statements, if we fear a swell of support for unpopular views and if we fear challenge, we will stifle not only free thought but independence and liberty. We will lose the opportunity to rebut and to expose to argument, analysis and scrutiny, and we will lose the opportunity to win over those who may have listened, silently supported and agreed.

Limiting free speech does not always quash unwelcome beliefs. France has more laws restricting free speech than any other western democracy. It also has Europe’s largest far-right party. In 2009, Nick Griffin appeared on “Question Time”, watched by 8 million people. At the time, the BNP polled 6.26% of the national vote. In the first general election after that it not only failed to win a seat but fragmented in the polls. Last week, the Electoral Commission announced that the BNP had been stripped of its status as an official political party. The New Statesman referred to the poor performance on “Question Time” as a factor in eroding Nick Griffin’s popularity and the support of the BNP. To persuade those who may share the beliefs of a speaker, we need to do more than silence that speaker. We need to address the real grievances of those who may support them. We need to listen. We need to take note, and then we need to respond.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady, who is also my constituent, for giving way. Does she know that in the 24 hours after Nick Griffin had the platform of appearing on “Question Time”, 3,000 people joined the BNP?

[Lucy Frazer]

It is important to have free speech, so that we have debate. Nick Griffin’s appearance on “Question Time” will have evoked a number of responses. When there is an advocate for something, there will always be people who follow them. It may be a small minority. What we need to do is put those voices out there in order to slam them down. That, ultimately, is what has happened to the BNP.

Donald Trump’s statement that all Muslims should be banned from the US wrongly categorises an entire religion with a few extremists. His statements should be exposed as such. Now is not the time to ban him. Now is the time to say clearly that extremist Islamists are wrong and must be rooted out and stopped. Now is the time to say that the Muslim community is not Daesh. Now is the time to say that Muslims have given us such things as algebra and transformed the study of light and optics—discoveries that founded one of the bases for our modern technologies.

The other real difficulty is that Donald Trump is a presidential candidate. If we banned the leader of every country who made offensive, inappropriate or inflammatory statements or who took steps we did not approve of, we would have a much more limited foreign policy. Indeed, we may not even have a Leader of the Opposition.

I welcome both petitions and this debate. We live in a democracy that respects freedom of expression. When people make unacceptable statements, we need to use our capacity to expose their weaknesses and then ultimately defeat their arguments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I fully appreciate the hon. Lady’s remark, but as other people have observed, the answer to Donald Trump’s ban is not to ban him. That does not make any sense to me, and I will explain why briefly. He is banning Muslims. In his own mind, he is saying that Muslims constitute a danger to the United States. That is what he thinks, and on those grounds he is banning them. We are doing the same thing if we ban him. We are saying that Donald Trump represents a danger to the United Kingdom, and on that ground we are banning him from coming. The implied logic is exactly the same. The circumstances are different, but the logical thought is exactly the same.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thoroughly disagree with the hon. Gentleman when he says that this is exactly the same. It is not exactly the same: Donald Trump has said that he wants to ban all Muslims because of their religion. That is 1.6 billion people whom he wants to ban, because of their religion. The reason why some Members are asking for him to be banned is the rhetoric, the sentiment and the values that he has expressed. That is different from banning someone because of their religion. I hope that that point is clear to another Member who made the same point.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have been very generous with interventions, but I want to clarify that point. I do not have much time, but I repeat: the ground on which Donald Trump is banning Muslims is not their faith; it is because he believes that they constitute a danger to the United States. That is the ground—[Interruption.] I am just explaining his logic; I do not agree with it. And I am saying that any case to ban Donald Trump would be on the basis that he is a danger to our civic safety. Logically, it is exactly the same.