Impractical and wrong in principle: former MI5 chief's verdict on Brown's 42-day plan
I wrote yesterday of how Lord Falconer and Lord Goldsmith were both opposing Gordon Brown's attempt to push his 42 day terrorist detention bill through the Lords, but today he comes across an even more formidable opponent than the former attorney general and the former lord chancellor; today he is being opposed by the former head of MI5, Lady Manningham-Buller who condemned Brown's plans as unworkable and all but accused Downing Street of playing politics with Britain's national security.
Brown is indeed playing politics here as there is utterly no need for a 42 day extension and he is only calling for one in the hope of making the Tories look weak on terrorism. But he's playing very bad politics because the people rounding on him are in no way partisan. The former attorney general and the former lord chancellor have now been joined by the former head of MI5 in condemning Brown's plans as unworkable and basically undemocratic.Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5 for five years until her retirement last April, said: "On a matter of principle I cannot support the 42 days pre-charge detention in this bill. I don't see on a practical basis, as well as a principled one, that these proposals are in any way workable ... because of the need for the suspect to be given the right to a fair trial."
She called for issues of national security to be, as far as possible, above party politics. "Polarised positions are damaging to what we are all trying to achieve in preventing, detecting and countering terrorism," she said.
Her remarks were seen as particularly significant because there has been speculation that MI5 has been lukewarm about the 42-day plan.
Her successor Jonathan Evans said last month it would not be appropriate for MI5 to involve itself in the debate.
There was no vote yesterday, but peers are expected to reject this proposal when it comes to a vote in August.Peers from all sides of the chamber rounded on the plan. Falconer, Tony Blair's former lord chancellor, said there was no reason to extend the pre-charge detention period because the police can charge terror suspects on a lower threshold, known as the "threshold test". He said this test had been used successfully since 2006 when the Commons rejected Blair's proposal to extend the pre-charge period to 90 days, something he had supported. Falconer said: "For terrorists, the threshold test allows charging where the evidence to show 50%-plus prospects is not yet available but the authorities believe on reasonable grounds it will become available and if the detainee were released he could become a danger ... It allows charging where the authorities believe the evidence will come from, for example, the forensic examination of computers from abroad. It means there is no need for an artificial deadline."
He said extending the pre-charge detention period by 14 days - the current limit is 28 days - would make no difference.
"If someone has been in custody for 28 days and there isn't even a reasonable suspicion it seems extremely odd there could be a basis for detaining him," he said.
Which only makes it totally bizarre that this was the bill on which Brown chose to make a stance. After all it was on this very subject that Tony Blair suffered his only Commons defeat. Brown succeeded in pushing it through the Commons - with the support of the Unionists - but must have known that it would fail to pass through the Lords.
This is a fight which Brown didn't have to have, he chose this battleground. It's a battleground on which people like myself always said that he would face defeat. And it's a battleground on which, if he wins, he will lose support from the Labour base.
I've stopped even trying to understand what he is up to. He appears to be attempting to set out a Blairite stall, which isn't somewhere he should ever want to find himself. He's in for a rough summer. And it's all trouble of his own making.
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