Plan for 42-day detention 'will be walloped'

GOVERNMENT plans to allow terrorist suspects to be held without trial for 42 days will be "walloped" by the House of Lords tonight, a leading Tory civil rights campaigner has predicted.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, who quit as a MP to force a by-election by claiming Labour was threatening historic liberties, said he expected the proposals to effectively be killed off by a Lords rebellion.

The plans, contained in the Counter Terrorism Bill, only scraped through the Commons by nine votes in June, when 36 Labour MPs voted against the government. A Lords defeat would force Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, to decide whether to use the Parliament Act to overturn the second chamber – but there is the belief that many MPs who backed the 42-day plans before the summer have now changed their minds.

Mr Davis, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show yesterday, said he expected the proposal to increase pre-charge detention from 28 to 42 days to be "thrown out by a huge majority". He added: "It think it will be dead. We've got a debate this Monday on it. We'll hear opposition from all parties. I think it will be walloped."

Unlike the Commons, Labour does not hold a majority in the Lords, where only 213 of the 732 peers take the party's whip. But even Labour figures such as Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, and Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, have expressed their concerns about the proposals.

The Prime Minister believes extending the limit is necessary to give police extra time to investigate suspects. He says plots are becoming increasingly complex, both technologically and in terms of the pan-national search for clues, and wants to update the law at a time of relative calm rather than having to bring emergency legislation before Parliament during a security crisis.

However, he won the earlier Commons vote only with the support of nine Democratic Unionist MPs. Since then, public support for 42 days had waned, said Mr Davis, who was subsequently re-elected. He predicted that MPs would not be prepared to force through such controversial legislation using the Parliament Act.

The Lords are expected to back an amendment proposed by Lord Dear, an independent cross-bench peer and former chief constable of West Midlands police, limiting detention without charge to 28 days.

The Home Office denied reports that it was ready to abandon the Bill and refused to speculate on the "hypothetical" situation of being forced to rely on the Parliament Act.

It said in a statement yesterday: "We will continue to press for the changes needed to protect the public from terrorism as it makes its way through the House of Lords this week."

Authors stage literary protest over terror bill

SOME of the biggest names in Scottish literature have joined a protest against plans to hold terrorism suspects for up to 42 days.

Scots writers including Ian Rankin, AL Kennedy, Andrew O'Hagan, Ali Smith, Jackie Kay and Hardeep Singh Kohli have contributed short stories to a campaign by the pressure group Liberty.

Rankin, creator of the Rebus detective books, said in his story there was "no rationale" behind the decision to extend the time limit.

He creates a scene in which two policemen discuss why the maximum of 42 days was proposed, with their answers ranging from the figure given as the meaning of life in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the number of peanuts the two officers have eaten in the pub.

O'Hagan, who recalled the effect on him of meeting a man called Michael who had been in and out of prison, wrote: "We live in a state that can show itself too ready to gorge on vulnerability."

Kennedy, who recently won the Costa prize for her novel Day, wrote: "In 42 days we will have made you different. You may be charged. You may be released. You will always be different … We will steal you from yourself."

Other writers participating in the campaign include Philip Pullman, Julian Barnes and Monica Ali.