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UK parliament to debate banning Trump

by Jesse Byrnes - 01/05/16 1:09 PM ET

The British parliament will formally debate later this month whether to prevent Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump from entering the United Kingdom, the government said Tuesday.

The U.K. parliament on Jan. 18 will debate a petition started last month that garnered more than 550,000 signatures to ban Trump after the outspoken candidate’s proposal to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S.

{mosads}All petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures are immediately considered for debate, though officials in the U.K. did not signal until Tuesday that they would actually debate the petition to ban Trump.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was among those leaders who condemned Trump’s Muslim ban proposal, saying last month that it was “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.”

The British government last week affirmed the ability of Home Secretary Theresa May to block non-European Economic Area nationals from entering the U.K. if their presence is deemed “non-conducive to the public good.”

Trump has stood by his proposal to temporarily bar Muslim from nationals from entering the country amid stoked fears of terrorism, though the issue has lost attention a month out from early voting in the U.S.

Tags 2016 GOP primary Donald Trump Muslim ban United Kingdom