42 days: government loses the argument

Hurrah for the House of Lords who threw out 42 days last night. Resoundingly, and thumpingly, in one of the biggest votes against the government ever. Normally this would be big news, especially after all the political capital invested in it by Gordon Brown but Bankmageddon drew the fire.

UPDATE: Great piece from Shami who has done more than perhaps anyone else to nail this.

I was up in Leeds with Kate Allen and the campaign team from Amnesty when I heard, at the launch of their new film. On the train back, Davide from Blairwatch filled me in on Jacqui Smith's live reaction, holding the phone close to the TV so I could hear her.

It sounded like a lot of petulant squawking to me. We toasted the 42 days demise with relief.
On closer examination, the Home Secretary's speech was even more awful than it sounded.
It is ludicrous to say that people like Eliza Manningham Buller, recently-retired head of M15, the director of public prosecutions Ken McDonald and the former Labour attourney general Lord Goldsmith are people who are 'prepared to ignore the terrorist threat'. In fact it was their extremely detailed knowledge of the terrorist threat that led them to point out that the bill was dangerous and counter-productive.

And to prove that this is all about using fear to play politics, now there's a one-pager to be whipped out if there's another terrorist attack, described by the shadow home secretary as 'one of the most bizarre things I have ever read'.

42 days won't go through when people are calm and rational and have time to think about it, so we'll stuff it away for now only to shove it through when everyone's in a highly emotional state instead. Classy.

Guardian's timeline of 42 days detention and editorial
BBC 'have your say' reaction (most recommended)
BBC - Campaigners hail 42 days defeat
Spectator - 'a good day to bury bad legislation'
Chicken Yogurt '42 days: Stick a fork in it'
Times

However, 42 days is not the only dodgy and disturbing part of the counter terrorism bill.
See Marcel Berlins on secret inquests.

When I enquired about this, I was told by an insider that the motivation for this part of the bill is so that wiretap evidence or evidence which could not be used in public court because it would endanger, or identify, say, a security services officer working undercover could be shown to the family of the deceased, privately.

I can see the point of this, but unfortunately good intentions are no excuse for bad law. The Lords will debate the rest of the bill on 15th and 21st October.

I was against 28 days, by the way. Hopefully we can get some traction to repeal that next.

42 days is toast (probably)

Sean O'Neill, the crime and security editor at the Times has been on a bit of a roll recently - breaking the story of Sir Ian Blair's departure a month before it happened.
Today he broke the story about 42 days being dropped as 'unworkable', which has been picked up by Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor and by several other newspapers.
The jig was well and truly up when the loquacious Andy Hayman, previously assistant commissioner for special ops at Scotland Yard wrote in a column for today's Times

'the Government's current proposals are not fit for purpose:

they are bureaucratic, convoluted and unworkable'

which has been blindingly obvious for several months. Hayman makes the point about 'playing politics' and 'games' several times. And of course that is exactly what all this was always about.

The government have already denied that they have dropped 42 days. They will drop it of course - they'll have to, next week, when the Lords absolutely savage it. It stank from its inception and the way it was bribed and bullied through the Commons was not only dishonourable but a complete waste of time. I was very pleased when my MP, Diane Abbott made a thunderous speech decrying it and when David Davis resigned as Shadow Home Secretary in protest at it.

The coup de grace to 42 days was administered by the previous head of M15, the newly-minted Baronness Eliza Manningham Buller, in her sensational maiden speech in the Lords. She was, let us not forget, in charge of M15 during the 7/7 bombings and served 33 years in the security service - so can hardly be accused of being a dewy-eyed idealist in denial about the true nature of the threat from terrorism. At that point, it was dead in the water, and rightly so. Just for good measure, another former spy chief Stella Rimington poured cold water on it last week as well.

However, the bad news is that the 'secret inquests without juries' clause is still in the counter -terror legislation, and with recent news that the government wants to spend £12 billion
on a database to store every email, phone call and text we send, plus the
insane waste of money that is ID cards, it is very clear that the fight to
preserve our freedoms is more important than ever.

Worth bookmarking....

Liberty
Amnesty
Inquest
Theyworkforyou

UPDATE: It turns out that that the Council of Europe ( click here for an explanation of what they are) have pointed out this week that locking people up for six weeks in a police cell without actually charging them with any crime at all is quite possibly incompatible with European human rights legislation. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture also published a damning report.
Still think it's a fuss over nothing and you can't be too careful? A 23-year old student detained under the anti-terror legislation confirms 'it really is psychological torture'

Remember this: More than half of the people in the UK arrested for terrorism offences have been innocent and later released without charge, by the way. Yes, really. Go and look at the Home Office website if you don't believe me.
From September 2001 to March 2007 1,228 people were arrested under the terrorism laws.
669 were later released without charge.
Of those charged, only 41 were actually convicted under the terrorism act, and 183 were convicted under other legislation. ( murder, firearms, fraud, conspiracy to cause explosions and so on. Laws which we've had kicking about the statute books for a very long time)

And 114 people are at, or still awaiting trial.
It's probably more by now.