No Case for Extending Terror Limit, Mps Say

The government and the police have yet to make a convincing case for extending terror detention limits, an influential group of MPs said today.

In their response to plans by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, to extend the current 28-day detention limit to 42 days, the home affairs select committee raised fears that the Muslim community could come to regard the rules as a form of internment if ministers failed to prove why a longer period was required.

Just two days after quizzing Smith on the proposals, the chairman of the committee, Keith Vaz, said: "We saw no evidence there was a case for extending the pre-charge detention beyond 28 days.

"The home secretary herself told us only six out of 71 responses to the government's proposals on going beyond 28 days were supportive. This was a surprisingly small number."

Opposition to a higher limit from the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, some Labour backbenchers and civil rights groups could turn the proposal into the toughest test for the prime minister, Gordon Brown, so far. A previous attempt to extend the detention limit from 14 to 90 days led to Tony Blair's first parliamentary defeat in 2005, with MPs and peers forcing through a tighter limit of just 28 days.

The report said that, while the threat from terrorism remained "real and acute", it could be counterproductive to raise the maximum time for which police can hold and question suspects. Alternative changes to the law could make it easier to bring prosecutions and avoid the need to raise the limit, it added.

The committee report took a dim view of the "ridiculous" bar on the use of evidence from telephone taps and other bugs - known as "intercept" evidence. The MPs instead suggest a modified version of the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) to deal with exceptional circumstances for emergency detention.

Though the report cautioned that it was not "sensible for a national state of emergency to be triggered in the middle of a major investigation", it suggested a reform of the act to deal with "exceptional circumstances".

The report stated: "The committee considered the issue of exceptional circumstances which would extend the period beyond the statutory maximum. The committee felt the current law as enshrined in the CCA needed to be reformed if there was to be a successful consensus achieved for those exceptional circumstances.

"We urge the government to enter into discussions with all stakeholders to see if it can build support for any new proposals."

One Labour MP on the committee, David Winnick, voted against the committee proposal on the grounds that it implicitly endorsed the argument that measures for detention beyond 28 days were needed.

Winnick said: "This report does tear strips out of the government's intention to go beyond 28 days. However, I fear the compromise that was agreed - to modify the CCA - could be used by the government to say the committee were not supportive to go beyond 28 days but recognised it may be necessary."

The Tory shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: "The conclusions drawn in this report back up exactly what we have been telling the government.

"Namely, that none of the evidence available supports the case for extending the pre-charge detention period and that the fact intercept evidence is not admissible in terrorist trials is ridiculous."

Smith should drop the proposals to extend the 28-day detention limit and set her sights on implementing practical measures to get the best use of the current period, he added.

Those might include a "post-charge interview, the use of intercept evidence and enhanced sentences for withholding encryption keys," Davies said.

The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, said: "The consensus against extending pre-charge detention limits is growing day by day. We're seeing that people are ready to fight to preserve basic human rights in the UK.

"They quite rightly recognise that locking people up for six weeks without charge is totally excessive.

"The government has failed to make a convincing case for this draconian proposal and should abandon it as soon as possible."

Eric Metcalfe, of the human rights and law reform group Justice, said: "Parliament defeated the government's proposals for 90-day pre-charge detention back in 2005 and today's report has signaled that it would do the same to 42 days. "

"The committee's report is another nail in a coffin the government should never have exhumed in the first place."