The phrase "a general debate" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a discussion or discourse that covers broad topics or issues without focusing on specific details.
Example: "The conference will include a general debate on the future of renewable energy sources."
Alternatives: "a broad discussion" or "an open forum".
"We can't bring that bill for second reading, a general debate, then vote in committee.
On Monday there would be a general debate on sport: whether it was a good idea or not.
At the beginning of each regular session, the General Assembly also holds a general debate, in which all members participate and may raise any issue of international concern.
At the beginning of each regular session, the Assembly also holds a general debate, in which all members may participate and raise any issue of international concern.
But it can only be done as part of a general debate in which people are prepared to have a mature look at how parties fund themselves.
Also there is a general debate about whether it is time to abandon the protests in the square as a method of change and wait for a nascent political system to grow stronger.
There are all kinds of biological and technical issues, that form a wide scientific discipline base but no less important are clear ethical and social concerns that will become a topic of a very general debate in the next decades, not only among the technical experts.
I'll close by drawing a few morals for a more general debate about why things appear the way they do in perceptual experience.
The contrast between Gilbert and Lewis instantiates a more general debate over Homo economicus: a conception of agents as self-interested and instrumentally rational.
This paper relates this comparison to a more general debate of how different research designs contribute to a theory continuum.
