Parliament sets a date to debate barring Trump from entering the U.K.

The debate was scheduled after a petition submitted to U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May in late November, that called on British lawmakers to keep the Republican presidential front-runner from entering the U.K., garnered more than half a million signatures.

Parliament’s Petitions Committee requires that any petition with 100,000 signatures or more be submitted to the House of Commons for debate. However, a second petition opposing the suggested ban against Trump, will also be included in the Jan. 18 debate despite reaching just 40,000 signatures.

According to Helen Jones, chairwoman of the Commons petition committee, the debate will not conclude with a vote.

“By scheduling a debate on these petitions, the committee is not expressing a view on whether or not the government should exclude Donald Trump from the UK,” Jones told the BBC. “As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the committee has decided that the subject should be debated.”

One member of parliament, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, was quick to react to news of the upcoming debate Tuesday. Farron said he’d prefer to debate healthcare policy or inequality in the U.K.

The original petition was submitted by Scottish resident Suzanne Kelly, who argued that Trump’s “offensive rhetoric” falls in line with that of other individuals who’ve previously been barred from entering the country.

“The signatories believe Donald J. Trump should be banned from U.K. entry for his continued, unrepentant hate speech and unacceptable behaviour. His unacceptable behaviour is well documented, and we feel it foments racial, religious and nationalistic intolerance, which should not be welcome in the U.K.,” read a draft of the petition, first obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Trump, who owns a golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, has yet to comment on the movement to block him from entering the U.K.