Brown and Smith call for more support on terror laws

Published on Sunday 20 January 2008 21:01

GORDON Brown and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, have appealed to opposition parties to support an extension of the time terror suspects can be held without trial.

They indicated last night that they were determined to press ahead with controversial plans to extend the limit from 28 to 42 days despite strong reservations among their own backbenchers. Mrs Smith is due to meet backbench Labour MPs today to try to win over opponents.

While there were signals from Mrs Smith's Tory shadow, David Davis, that there might be a possible compromise after a series of meetings with her over "technical problems" with the use of existing legislation, the Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg pledged outright and implacable opposition.

The new head of the UK's third party has said they will join forces with the Tories in the Lords to block the move, predicting Mr Brown would suffer the first defeat of his premiership on the issue. But the Prime Minister said he believed it was still possible to reach a cross-party consensus when the government publishes its Counter Terrorism Bill later this week.

Mr Brown claimed all the main parties accepted there could be circumstances in which suspects would need to be detained beyond the current 28-day limit: "It may be a multiple terrorist plot, it may be a whole series of complex investigations that need to be done in the context of there being major terrorist incidents." He acknowledged that the government needed to offer assurances that civil liberties would be protected.

Mr Clegg said the government's offer of greater parliamentary oversight was a "false concession", adding: "It leads to the absurd position that you could have someone locked up for that longer period of time and Parliament would only be able to decide on whether that was justified or not after that longer period of detention had already expired."