I can't be bothered looking up the details about Italy, but if my memory serves me correctly I think it's true they can hold people for an incredibly long time. I'm just going off something David Aaronovitch said once on Question Time, though. It was after Meredith Kercher was killed; the suspects were held for months before being charged.

I'm completely against the extension to 42 days, and am very glad everyone else seems to be. Hardly anyone wants, and certainly nobody needs, the extension. The case for it just isn't persuasive and there are other things we can do first, like using phone-tap evidence, as other people have mentioned. I hope the government is defeated heavily.

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After the Glasgow car bomb, Shami Chakribarti endorsed using wire-tap evidence in court.

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I'm worried about the young men who will be interned for 42 days who are subsequently found to have done no wrong. They will go back to their communities forever divorced from engagement with the state.

And if there is any racial or religious profiling applied to such actions, we will drive countless people into fearful, defensive ghettos.

The police use the powers they are given. Peace campaigners have been detained at arms trade fairs under terrorism legislation. If the police want to keep someone for a while, they will find a way of applying this law.

We're better off without it and the voters won't thank us for driving people to radicalism.

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All too true. I hope the government is defeated.

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Political posturing. The Sun supported 90 days, and attacked the 'lefty' judiciary that opposed it.

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Prbo, are you suggesting I have only half a brain?  ;)

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I hope everyone posting on here is therefore lobbying their MP to oppose it! A little less conversation, a little more action.

The idea that supporting the Government on this, like a good little loyalist, will help Labour electorally is madness. If Labour rebels are seen at the forefront of opposition it takes the media spotlight away from the Tories and Lib Dems.

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I'm glad to see that this issue crosses the left-right divide. What world is Gordon living in?

Stand firm backbenchers, no matter how bad it might look for the government this is a point of principle. It goes against tradition, necessity and transnational precedents set by our European allies. There is also a legitimate argument that ths will worsen alienation amongst Muslims, so it's totally counterproductive.

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But isn't that a function of resources? If you have more, experienced and well-trained officers working a case - with the proper investment in intelligence, together with a co-operative international environment, wouldn't that reduce the perceived need for 42 or 90 days?

In fact, isn't the detention extension just an excuse not to provide this alternative investment?

And why 90 days - why not 180? Where do these arbitrary numbers come from?

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HOWLERMONKEY said: "Not a step to far. It's not the leap needed. 28 days is a joke 42 is still not enough it must be the 90. To unravel international terror across multiple borders, and through the bitstream takes time."

With respect, you're quite wrong.

Normally, if the Police are holding a suspect, its obvious that something brought that suspect to their attention... perhaps caught in the act or having been found with certain 'materials' in his possession? It follows that it should be a simple matter to charge that individual almost immediately.

Where a longer detention would be useful to the Police is if the suspect came to their attention because of a 'tip off' or simply by association with another AND where no (or little) other supporting evidence is discovered. 

The fact of the matter is; that this law won't protect us from those caught 'red handed' (assuming they hadn't already successfully launched their attack). But it will expose ALL of us to the risk of being snatched off the streets merely because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, happened to know the wrong people or because someone (maybe maliciously) pointed a finger in our direction.

42 Days will enable the Police the luxury to go fishing for half-imagined conspiracies. It will allow them unprecedented powers to dig into the personal lives and backgrounds of others in the hope of discovering some juicy evidence against an individual or even against their friends in turn. I guarantee that many will be swooped up in the big net but very few if any will be charged with an actual terrorist offence.

This is a very dangerous law, one that the Government promised they'd make a compelling case for... they haven't been able to do that. Instead, they now offer vague assurances that it will only be used in 'the most grave and exceptional circumstances'.  Clearly even they cannot make a rational case for such a law and I suggest this is precisely why we shouldn't entertain having such a measure on the statute books.

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As far as I'm aware, there's no desire amoung the police and intelligence services to use intercept evidence in court generally, as it's felt that it would generally making one successful conviction is not worth releasing details of how interceptions are made.

And surely that's the main issue with detention - what do those who are actually involved in fighting terrorism say about it? And the truth is that they don't think it will make a lot of difference. They haven't needed 28 days yet and they don't think they will any time soon. And even if one day an extraordinary series of events mean they do, it's a reasonably fairly simple procedure to make emergency legislation to temporarily extent it. The argument of ministers is mainly that if we were forced to do that it would seem like we were "giving in" to the terrorists. However, I think it's far better to make the permanent limit the one that has been satisfactory so far and will almost certainly continue to, with the risk that one day we might possibly need to make emergency legislation, than to accept this idea that we need a permanent 90 day limit.

 

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I actually support the government on this. Nobody on here is privy to the intelligence reports that Ministers get on Muslim extremism so cannt possibly be able to judge that it is not necessary to have thees peowers. If you were in the PMs shoes and the safety and security of the people was on your watch you may think more abut it rather than buying the silly reactions of rent a quote Chami Chakrabarti who I am sure is  Tory stooge.

The radical Islamic threat is the most serious terror threat we have ever faced.

The government have introduced a raft of measures that wil sunsure a lot of safeguards in place. 

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It's a matter of how much you value liberty, is it not? What price do you put on liberty? How much liberty are you prepared to "trade" in the, probably vain, hope that it will prevent outrages?

Using your argument, why stop at 42 days, why not 100, 200 or 1,000, or indefinite detention, or execution?

If it took the establishment of a police state and ruthless state terror to prevent future outrages would you support that? There was little terrorism in Hitler's Germany, in Stalin's Russia and in Sadam's Iraq. But would you go as far as this in Britain?

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I'm not sure what good jailing David Bowie's wife Iman would do?

I think you mean 'Imams' - but then ignorant fuckwits generally aren't too sharp on these things. Iman is a Muslim though so just lock her up too shall we!?

Maybe you should seriously investigate how easy it is to come to the UK if you're from outside the EU? 

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Well well well. Quite the nationalist aren't we? Stormfront would be a better place for statements like that to be made.

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3 asylum seekers, yes 3, in as many decades have been convicted of terror offences.

This is clearly a racist statement. Maybe not overtly. But the very fact that I am an anti-theist stops me believing in racial profiling. Christianity is not a race. Islam is not a race. Judaism (the religion being different from the ethnicity) is not a race. The only immigrant to have commited mass murder on 7/7, was from Jamaica. Islam, has adherents who have the East Asian features, as a mixture of Genghis Khan's conquering, and the clash of the Crusaders. In Kazakhstan, China, Malaysia, and other places, Muslims do not fit people's sterotypical image of a Muslim. There are White Europeans who are Muslim converts. Actually, if you study these terrorist atrocities carefully, there are a disproportionate amount of European jihadists. Why? Because they are more susceptible to be taken in by an extremist sect.

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I'm not sure that the government's past and present authoritarianism have ever reflected the views of most Labour Party members.  Many members would say that party policy isn't always decided in as democratic a way as it should be.

Hope you're right though. 

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No, listening to my MP's parliamentary report on Friday, she said she was tempted to put an amendment down to raise it to 90 days.  She, at least, isn't listening.

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You are quite right. I am no lawyer, but to me it is reminiscent of the Star Chamber, abolished by the Long Parliament in 1640.

See the National Archives Web site:
Star Chamber, Court of

So called because of the decorative pattern of stars on the ceiling of the chamber where it met, the Court of Star Chamber acted as a 'court of equity' in criminal matters. Founded in 1487, during the reign of Henry VII, it consisted of the chief officers of state and the two chief justices. Initially it had jurisdiction over unlawful riots and assemblies, offences of sheriffs, and jurors. This was later extended to offences against royal proclamations. The court was abolished by the Long Parliament in 1640."

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