Information on Loughborough

Loughborough MP votes for 42 day detention

Posted on 12/06/2008
Rhys

person behind bars

MP for Loughborough, Andy Reed, voted with the Government last night on the highly controversial proposals to increase the period on which someone can be held without charge on the suspicion of terrorism to 42 days.

Previous attempts at extending the current 28 days under the leadership of Tony Blair were rejected.

The proposals have received condemnation from a variety of sources: opposition MPs, civil liberty groups and Church Leaders. The person in charge of prosecutions for terrorists - the director of public prosecutions, has stated that it is not necessary. The head of MI5 has also said that he has not demanded the new power. Some senior police officers have stated that they want the additional power (it is unusual to find police officers who don’t want additional power), however others have argued that it will alienate whole communities and actually make intelligence gathering harder creating a detrimental effect.

The UK already has the longest period of pre-charge detention in the western world and this new legislation is a massive blow for the fundamental human right of liberty. There is no evidence that a longer detention period would have led to charges being made against any of the people arrested to date under the current 28 days. In comparison someone can be only held without charge on the suspicion of murder for 4 days.

The Human Rights organisation Liberty has been campaigning against the proposals and says that there are alternatives. These include giving resources to the police and intelligence services so that they can work faster, hiring of more interpreters to speed interviews, allow post charge questioning in terror cases and removing the bar on the admissibility of phone tap evidence.

In an effort to ensure success in the Commons various concessions were cobbled together and put on the table. One of these included compensation for those detained and not charged. However the £3,000 per day stated by Tony McNulty is risible. Given that a basic MI5 operative earns £24k p.a., the cost of 24 hour surveillance would be a small fraction of the compensation and could produce more information than repeatedly interviewing someone everyday for 6 weeks.

Speaking about the controversial plans prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough, Nicky Morgan, told inLoughborough "The House of Commons vote had more to do with Labour MPs keeping Gordon Brown in office than our national security. This Labour Government totally failed in its effort to win the argument on the need for 42 days detention. They continually chose to cite dubious support from intelligence services as a just cause for the extension, despite M15 earlier this week stating their neutrality on the subject. Our country has fought too long and too hard for our liberties to simply give them away on such weak arguments and for something which will do almost nothing to make our country a safer place to live"