The British government on Wednesday responded to an online petition with over 500,000 signatures calling for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump to be banned from entering the country.
The petition was created on Dec. 8 after Trump said that the U.S. should temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the country. The petition cites Trump's use of "hate speech" and asks that the state to band Trump under the "unacceptable behavior" criteria. Within hours, the petition garnered the 100,000 signatures needed for Parliament to debate the issue, and it currently sits with 566,300 signatures.
The government's mandatory response reaffirms the power of Home Secretary Theresa May to "exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good." May said that Trump's remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong, however, the statement stopped short of saying Trump should be prohibited from entering the country.
The government said that "coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right" and that May "will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values."
The statement also made it clear that Prime Minister David Cameron "completely disagrees" with Trump's remarks.
Speaking to Parliament after Trump's proposed Muslim ban, Cameron called the billionaire real estate mogul "stupid" and "three times a loser," according to CNN.
Speech laws are stricter in Britain than the U.S., and individuals are occasionally, but rarely, banned from entering the country for crimes such as "hostility" against people based on race, religion and sexual orientation, notes The Daily Caller.
Leaders of the Westboro Baptist Church, Islamist preachers, Ku Klux Klan officials and two anti-Muslim bloggers have been banned in recent years, according to BBC.
