Pizzas galore!

Mr Wilders, 45, an MP in the Netherlands, caught a British Midlands flight from Amsterdam this afternoon brandishing his passport and boarding pass. He said he would have to be physically restrained from entering the country. “I’ll see what happens at the border. Let them put me in handcuffs,” he said.

The MP was invited to attend a showing of his 17-minute film, Fitna, at the House of Lords by the UKIP peer Lord Pearson.

The film features verses from the Koran with images of terrorist attacks in New York, London and Madrid and calls on Muslims to remove “hate-preaching” verses from the text. Lord Pearson said that the screening would go ahead with or without Mr Wilders.

The Home Office decision to refuse Mr Wilders entry on account of his views provoked Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister, to call David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, to protest at the decision. “The fact that a Dutch parliamentarian is refused entry to another EU country is highly regrettable,” Mr Verhagen said.

In the House of Lords today, the peer who invited Mr Wilders to Britain mounted a staunch defence of the right-wing Dutch politician’s right to show a controversial film about Islam.

Lord Pearson aid he disagreed with some of Mr Wilders’ views but believed he should be allowed to express them.

He asked Home Office minister Lord West of Spithead: “Do you think this situation would occur if Mr Wilders had said ban the Bible. If it would not have occurred, why would it not have occurred?”

“Surely the violence and the disturbance that may arise from showing this film in this country is not caused by the film which attempts to show merely how the violent Islamist uses the Koran to perpetrate his terrible acts.

“The violence is coming from the Jihadist, the violent Islamist, and surely the Government in doing what it has done is therefore guilty of appeasement.”

Lord West replied: “I certainly don’t think we are guilty of appeasement in any way whatsoever. I don’t want to go down the route of discussing a hypothetical case of what if he talked about this, what if he talked about that.”

He told peers: “Under European law a member state of the European Economic Area may refuse entry to a national of another EEA state if they constitute a threat to public policy, public security or public health.”

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