42 days | ukwatch.net

Victory for Liberty's Charge or Release Campaign

Ellie Keen — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:11:50 +0000

PRESS RELEASE

The Government has dropped plans for 42 days detention. Last night saw a resounding victory for Liberty’s long running Charge or Release campaign. Common sense and common decency prevailed as the Government dropped plans to detain terror suspects for 42 days without charge, following an overwhelming defeat in the House of Lords. The Upper House rejected the proposal by a devastating 191 votes.

In an emergency statement to MPs shortly afterwards, the Home Secretary said that the counter-terrorism bill would continue its journey through parliament without the 42 day measure. The government will publish a bill containing the 42 day plan; this bill will be held in reserve to be introduced should there be a terrorist emergency.

Highlights from the House of Lords debate

The vote followed a three-hour debate dominated by opponents of 42 days from all quarters of the Lords. There were 24 Labour rebels including two former Lord Chancellors, Lord Irvine of Lairg and Lord Falconer of Thoroton, as well as Baroness Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, Justice Lord Woolf, former Lord Chief Justice and Lord Condon, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Lord Falconer, dismissed the government’s arguments as “fanciful”, telling peers he had changed his mind after supporting plans to detain terror suspects without charge for 90 days in 2005. He said:

“The idea that extending [the detention period] from 28 days to 42 days is going to make a difference is utterly fanciful.”

Lord Dear, a former West Midlands chief constable, told peers:

“There is almost universal opposition to what the Government proposes.

“It almost beggars belief that any administration could embark on such a course.”

Lady Neville-Jones, the shadow security minister and former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, condemned the plans as “unnecessary, undesirable and unworkable’‘.

And Baroness Mallalieu, a Labour peer, said that while she was in the “uncomfortable” position of being forced to vote against her party, the plan was: “dangerous, wrong and completely and wholly unnecessary in practice.”

A cross-party political and public campaign

With your help and support, Liberty’s award winning Charge or Release campaign has been running for over a year. We have consistently urged the Government to drop these damaging proposals and have condemned the measures as wrong in principle, unnecessary and counter-productive.

Liberty has been overwhelmed by public and parliamentary support for Charge or Release, a true cross-party political and public campaign against this unnecessary and divisive policy.

Support for Charge or Release has come all corners and from across the globe. Supporters have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, political activist Noam Chomsky, Pakistan’s Human Rights Commissioner Asma Jahangir, designer Vivienne Westwood, former Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear, UNITE, UNISON, CWU, National Union of Journalists, the General Synod, journalists and columnists from a wide range of newspapers, senior legal opinion, the four London Mayoral candidates, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, the two main opposition parties and a large number of Labour MPs and peers.

Freedom Reading

On the eve of the vote in the House of Lords, forty-two leading writers added their support for Charge or Release, displaying their opposition to the plans through forty-two poignant pieces of writing. ’42 Writers for Liberty’ showcases new works by leading writers including Philip Pullman, Monica Ali, Julian Barnes, Mohsin Hamid, Ian Rankin, Sadie Jones, Ali Smith and A.L. Kennedy. Visit www.42writers.com to read these wonderful works.

Thank you – we did it with your support.

With your help now and into the future, should this or any future government try again, they can rest assured that Liberty will be ready and waiting.

Thank you for supporting Charge or Release and please continue to support Liberty’s campaigns.

SEP speaks to voters in Cottingham and Willerby

tim — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:23:39 +0000

Chris Talbot is the candidate of the Socialist Equality Party in the July 10 by-election in the constituency of Haltemprice and Howden in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It was called following the resignation of sitting Conservative MP David Davis in protest at government “anti-terrorist” legislation enabling police to detain individuals for up to 42 days without charge.

Angela Morkos is a mature student at Hull University and lives in Cottingham.

“I am familiar with all the issues that people are standing for. The SEP stands for more or less what I agree with,” she said.

“I am against the war in Iraq, I don’t like big business and I think David Davis is mobilising right-wing policies in Britain. I watch the news on TV and I suspected this. And I would never trust a Conservative anyway, to be quite honest.”

Angela said she fully agreed with the SEP’s aim of preventing Davis mobilising the popular hostility to the Labour government for his own right-wing agenda. She explained that she opposed all the attacks on democratic rights carried out by successive Conservative and Labour governments.

“I think Gordon Brown has been disappointing. I supported Blair when he first came into power but I was disappointed over the Iraq war. I didn’t believe all this about weapons of mass destruction when I heard about it on the TV. I think it was a bit like Maggie Thatcher and the Falklands War, that Blair wanted to be the next Churchill. I think he had delusions of grandeur.

“Before this election I have tended to support Liberal Democrat policies in Parliament.”

Angela said that she wasn’t aware that the Liberal Party were not standing their own candidate and that they were calling for a vote supporting Davis. The SEP explained that this showed how far the Liberals have moved in a right-wing direction, that they can now support an avowed anti-working class politician such as David Davis.

Angela said she supported the fact that only the SEP was putting forward a coherent programme representing working class people.

In response to questions about the impact of the worsening economic crisis on working class people, Angela said, “I think it very worrying. I am on a low income. I feel that around here businesses exploit me. I am on Disability Living Allowance. I think there is a prejudice against people who are unable to work. I am doing my best and am actually studying to improve my situation and I find I am just exploited.

“All the basics are going up—milk, cheese, butter. I have to live on lentils basically and people lending me a couple of quid because they feel sorry for me. That is not very healthy and I’m anaemic as it is.

“Then there are dental charges and I don’t know how I am going to afford those. I also have to take regular medication and I am just glad that at least prescription charges are free at the moment for people on Disability Living Allowance.

“I think all this stems from Margaret Thatcher anyway. Tony Blair said that he agreed with her and I think it all worsened right from the beginning with her. And the governments after Thatcher have just continued in the same vein since then”.

Kate Webster is a retired doctor’s receptionist and lives in Cottingham.

Socialist Equality Party members and supporters campaigned in the villages Cottingham and Willerby on July 2 and a reporting team from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to workers, students and youth about the issues raised in the election.The WSWS reporting team asked her what she thought of David Davis, the Labour Party and their attitude to the question of democratic rights.

“I don’t think David Davis stands for democratic rights. I thought the Conservatives are always for the richer people aren’t they? What I can’t understand is him resigning and then trying to get re-elected. What is all that about?”

Katie agreed that both the Labour Party and the Conservatives are right-wing formations, hostile to the working class.

“I wouldn’t have voted for Davis and I think the Labour Party are too right-wing. I saw that the NSPCC [a national child protection organisation] was trying to get smacking stopped, but Davis wasn’t interested in that.

“I didn’t agree with the Iraq war. The Labour Party are more like capitalists now. They are giving themselves a great big raise and the credit crisis is not affecting their pay is it?

“There is no party now for the working class. I will read the SEP election statement and I will vote for Chris Talbot,” Katie said.

During the campaign in Cottingham several other local residents told the SEP that they had heard about the party’s campaign and would be supporting Chris Talbot. Among these was a currently unemployed bricklayer, who said that he had read the SEP election statement a few days ago and that he agreed with a revolutionary socialist programme. He said he would like further discussion on the role of new left formations in Europe and the Socialist Workers Party. He added that he was going to attend the Eve of Poll meeting being held by the SEP at Cottingham Civic Hall on July 9.

During the day Chris Talbot was filmed and interviewed by a student from the University of Sheffield who was covering the by-election as her final project.

Labour refuses to answer Davis’s by-election challenge

Tim Holmes — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:58:55 +0000

Labour will not contest the by-election forced by the resignation of shadow home secretary David Davis, which he says is intended to initiate a public debate on the government’s attack on democratic rights.

The decision confirms that the Labour government is incapable of defending its extension of the period in which people can be detained without charge to 42 days—a measure that it managed to push through Parliament only with the support of nine members of the Democratic Unionist Party, reportedly “persuaded” with financial incentives for Northern Ireland.

More fundamentally, it underscores Labour’s hostility to any form of democratic accountability—a position which it made a point of principle with its decision to support the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq in defiance of popular opinion.

Initially, Davis’s announcement was greeted with universal scorn and derision by the media, who claimed that his “egotistical stunt” would backfire due to broad public support for the government’s stance.

While Labour joined such claims, it refused to say if it would contest the election from the very start. Instead, having been defeated in the London Mayoral contest by Conservative Boris Johnson and with record lows in opinion polls, it turned to its closest backer, Rupert Murdoch, for help.

Within hours of Davis’s resignation, Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, boasted that he had the oligarch’s blessing to take on Davis and that “the Sun has always been up for 42 days, or perhaps even 420 days, frankly.”

MacKenzie, who said he had discussed his candidacy with Murdoch and Sun editor Rebekah Wade earlier that evening, said he was “90 percent certain” to challenge Davis if Labour decided not to. He also revealed that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tony Blair had been present at the party, implying that he had Labour’s backing to act as its proxy.

But as thousands of e-mails and texts to newspapers and media outlets showed that Davis’s stance had struck a chord with the public, little was heard from MacKenzie or the Sun for several days.

The former editor’s claim that Murdoch would finance his candidacy—which would be illegal under electoral law—combined with the possibility that the Sun’s claim to represent the “man in the street” would founder should it be seen to tie itself too closely to an unpopular government—appears to have done for MacKenzie’s candidacy.

Not that Murdoch was out of the picture. The Guardian reported that the Sun had also “considered approaching Rachel North, a survivor of the 7/7 bombings, who has campaigned for justice for the victims.” And his other media outlet, Sky News, reported that Labour was canvassing John Smeaton to stand in its place. The baggage handler won the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for helping police foil a terrorist attack at Glasgow Airport last year. The report was considered especially authoritative because it came from Sky TV’s political editor Adam Boulton, husband of Anji Hunter, Blair’s former spin-doctor and close friend.

North, however, told the Guardian that she “admired Davis’s stand” and was “a big fan of civil liberties and freedom and democracy.” At the weekend, Smeaton also scotched claims that he had any intention of standing, stating that he did not understand where the rumours were coming from.

Finally, on Thursday, MacKenzie confirmed he would not be a candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, citing financial considerations.

“The clincher for me was the money. Clearly the Sun couldn’t put up the cash—so I was going to have to rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct my campaign,” he said, rewriting events to suggest that the earlier declaration of his candidacy had been entirely a personal whim. Instead, he urged Sun readers to support Northampton market trader Eamonn Fitzpatrick, who has said he will run as an independent in favour of 42-days detention.

Currently, the unknown fruit and vegetable salesman is one of several independent candidates who, in addition to their campaign over one or another single issue, are defending the government’s detention powers.

Labour’s hostility to democratic accountability

Labour has attempted to justify its abstention on the grounds that the by-election is a “farce.” Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman accused Davis of “wasting over £80,000 to run a by-election, paid for by the council taxpayers,” while Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said Davis should be made to personally foot the bill.

Such demands establish an entirely new criterion for elections—i.e., whether the government of the day considers them politically pertinent or financially worthwhile. Labour has already overturned its manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty—rejected by Irish voters last weekend—on the grounds that it no longer considers it necessary.

In truth, Labour cannot publicly defend its policies because it is the political plaything of big business and the super-rich, whose interests are antithetical to those of the broad mass of the population.

That is why Brown chose to make his rebuttal to Davis before an invite-only audience of just 50 people from the pro-Labour think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The thrust of his speech on June 17 was that “modern security” requirements, “modern challenges” and “new threats” could not be managed “by the old, tried methods and approaches.”

Terrorism, organised crime and drug trafficking were all organised globally, using the latest technology, he said.

Whereas in the “old world” police took “fingerprints, now we have the technology of DNA.”

“While the old world relied on the eyes of a policeman out on patrol, today we also have the back-up of CCTV.

“While the old world used only photographs to identify people, now we have biometrics.”

In other words, technological progress justifies the state’s acquisition of massive new powers—including plans for a national DNA database, identity cards and widespread surveillance (as in the case of closed-circuit cameras)—an argument that evokes Orwell’s 1984.

As for Brown’s claims that technological developments could be used to “strengthen the protection of the individual,” there was no evidence of this in his speech, which was all about strengthening the state. His pledge that liberty meant “never subjecting the citizen to arbitrary treatment” and “always respecting basic rights and freedoms” was made ridiculous by the government’s passage of 42-days, and its earlier plans to introduce 90-days detention.

Concern at exposure of Labour and the “left”

It is a measure of the putrefaction of Labour and the so-called “left” in general that a right-wing Tory can present himself as the champion of civil liberties.

Labour’s 42-days detention is only the latest and most draconian of the more than 200 pieces of “anti-terror” legislation enacted by Labour since 2001 that have overturned fundamental civil liberties and have established the legislative framework for a police state.

Throughout this time, the Conservative Party has supported the “war on terror.” Davis himself voted in favour of 28-days detention without charge and the Iraq war. But he can attack Labour as “gutless” because not a single Labour “left” was prepared to break ranks and challenge the government. The two Labour “rebels” over 42-days who have said they will back Davis—Bob Marshall-Andrews and Ian Gibson—only did so when it became clear the government would not contest the election.

Even more strikingly, all the government’s critics have thus far preferred to sign up to Davis’s campaign, rather than launch their own. Veteran Labourite Tony Benn has said he supports Davis, as has Observer columnist Henry Porter and Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights organisation Liberty.

This has raised alarm at the pro-Labour New Statesman magazine, which, like all official political circles in Britain, was caught off-guard by the extent of the political disaffection that would be revealed by Davis’s resignation.

On June 12, New Statesman editor Martin Bright had hailed Davis’s “courageous” resignation. In his blog, “I salute David Davis,” he wrote that the shadow home secretary had done “the decent thing” and wished “Davis well” in the election.

Within a week, his position had changed. The government’s abstention and the willingness of its “liberal” critics to rally to a Tory candidate left Bright concerned that Labour’s left periphery was fatally compromised politically.

In an air of desperation, Bright wrote, asking, “Where is the David Davis of the left, prepared to resign and challenge the government’s authoritarian agenda…. Where is the politician or public figure to challenge the government’s authoritarian agenda from a progressive perspective? In short, where is the liberal candidate to stand in Haltemprice and Howden?”

Issuing the call for a “genuinely liberal candidate to stand against David Davis,” he pledged that such a candidate “would receive the full backing of the New Statesman.”

New Labour Push Through 42 Days' Detention

Tim Holmes — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:15:25 +0000

The Brown government managed to pass its new anti-terror bill through parliament on Wednesday by a majority of just nine.

By 315 to 306, it was agreed to extend the period in which a person can be detained without charge from 28 days to 42. Little now remains of habeas corpus, on which Britain’s international reputation as the home of personal liberty rested. The UK now has one of the most undemocratic terms on detention without charge in the world—worse even than Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, which the British government routinely condemns as dictatorial and authoritarian.

There had been speculation that Prime Minister Gordon Brown would lose the vote. Some 47 sitting MPs had voted against then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plan to extend the period of detention without charge to 90 days and both the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had spoken out against the 42-day measure. Virtually the entire media, with the exception of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, had also denounced it, as had the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and human rights organisation Liberty.

In the event, just 36 Labour MPs voted against the 42-day extension. That still would have been enough to defeat the measure, but it was salvaged by the nine votes of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

The DUP claimed that it had voted out of principle, in order to safeguard national security. But principle was the last thing that was involved in the debate. Afterwards, it emerged that democratic safeguards had been horse-traded for the sum of £1.2 billion—the financial aid package Brown reportedly offered Northern Ireland in return for DUP support.

Labour discussions with the DUP continued up to the last hours before the vote. Reports indicate that the government has agreed that Northern Ireland will be able to keep the proceeds from the sale of army bases, worth £1 billion, and will gain a further £200 million through the relaxation of Treasury rules on the proceeds of new water charges. The government has also apparently pledged that Britain’s liberal abortion laws will not be extended to Northern Ireland.

It took even less to buy off some potential Labour “rebels,” some of whom were apparently persuaded to support the government by vague promises on compensation to miners with lung disease and that the UK would back a relaxation of sanctions on Cuba.

The more fundamental concern for many of the putative rebel Labour MPs in switching to backing the government was the political implications of a defeat of the 42-day extension. Labour MP Austin Mitchell said that he had changed to supporting the extension in order to “save Gordon Brown for the nation. I support him and I think he would be on his way out if he had been defeated on this.”

After a series of electoral losses for Labour, and with opinion polls showing that the party’s supporters are leaving it in droves, the government feared that the bill’s loss would leave Brown fatally wounded.

That only intensified accusations that Brown was proceeding recklessly in forcing the matter to a vote—utilizing the “war on terror” for political posturing in the manner of his predecessor, and further discrediting Parliament in the process. Likewise, Liberty charged that Brown had “sexed up” the case for extending the period of detention—the charge made against Blair over Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Brown countered that his refusal to back down on the extension was motivated solely by “national security” concerns, and made necessary by the fact that it took far longer for police to trawl through computers and decrypt potential terror plots. According to the latest figures available, however, 1,113 people had been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 between September 11, 2001 and September 30, 2006, of which just 104 were charged with specific terror-related offences. Moreover, since the limit was raised to 28 days in 2006, only 11 suspects have been held without charge for longer than 14 days.

Writing in the Times, Philippe Sands QC said that the prime minister had “plucked a detention number from the air with no evidence to back it up.”

“What seems to have happened is that early on in his premiership Mr. Brown took a punt on a number—an arbitrary 42 days—and is now stuck with it. The policy was fixed on the basis of an ill-conceived political objective—tough on terror—and not on the basis of the evidence or any proper consultation.”

Powers already exist to extend the period of detention beyond 28 days. The Civil Contingencies Act allows for an additional 30 days, but the government argued that it wanted the police to be given the extra time without having to declare a state of national emergency.

In the end, Brown agreed a number of supposed safeguards on the 42-day extension. These are that a chief constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions must request the extension from the Home Secretary only in the context of a “grave exceptional terrorist threat.” Parliament must then debate and vote in favour of this extension within one week of the request being made. If it is passed, police will have 30 days to exercise their powers. But the government claims that the principle of habeas corpus will be upheld by judges having to regularly scrutinize such detentions. It has also said that those held beyond 28 days and then released without charge will be liable for compensation of up to £3,000 for each day they are held.

None of these “protections” are viable. As the Times newspaper editorialized, the security services would likely refuse to release details of the evidence on which they were applying for the extension to parliament, on the grounds that it would compromise national security. “But if they did, and Parliament upheld a request, it would have voted on the evidence and thereby jeopardised the suspect’s chances of a fair trial. And if they did not, this vaunted parliamentary scrutiny would be little more than a charade.”

More importantly, 42-day detention without charge (and 28, 14 and 7 days for that matter) is a flagrant abuse of democratic safeguards. Once again, the state has been given extraordinary powers to lock people up and interrogate them without those held having any legal recourse, or even knowing the grounds on which they are being imprisoned. And, as Liberty has pointed out, the Home Secretary’s decision to invoke “grave and exceptional” circumstances is not subject to any legal requirement that he cite his evidence and can be taken in response to a supposed threat emanating from anywhere in the world.

Political commentary following the vote was generally in agreement that the result would do nothing to win Brown popular support. The Guardian said it was a “hollow victory” in which “the prime minister has squandered parliamentary time, goodwill and his reputation as a man of principle on a symbolic sacrifice of liberty.” The Times wrote that Brown was “still fighting for his political life.” Only the Sun lauded the result as “a major victory for the PM after a torrid six months. He passed it with credit.”

Such supposed “credit” was immediately spent when it was revealed, within moments of the vote, that top-secret documents containing the government’s latest intelligence on Al Qaeda had been left on a London subway train.

One document, commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, reportedly contains “damning” information on Iraq’s security forces. The other document, reportedly entitled “Al-Qaeda Vulnerabilities,” was commissioned jointly by the Foreign Office and the Home Office and marked “UK Top Secret” and “for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only.”

The revelation that an intelligence official had apparently forgotten the documents made a farce of Brown’s earlier insistence that his government would “take no risks with security.”

Brown no doubt was determined to see through the 42-day extension and prove himself “tough” on national security to the likes of the Sun. He has been ridiculed as a “coward” and a “ditherer” after backing down on a range of issues, including calling an early general election immediately after he assumed leadership of the Labour Party.

But focusing exclusively on the political crisis surrounding Brown serves to dull the political faculties of working people as to the consequences of Parliament’s decision. Numerous commentators claim that the government is in such a mess, and so weakened, that the bill will not make it onto the statute books.

Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, for example, said the “thinness of the Commons majority” justified the House of Lords blocking the bill. And the Equality and Human Rights Commission established by the government under its chairman Trevor Phillips had already announced before the vote that it would launch a legal challenge to the extension if it were passed, on the grounds that it violates the European Convention on Human Rights. The Guardian editorialized that the law “quite possibly, will never come into force.”

Willem Buiter in the Financial Times gave voice as to what really had been agreed. The “UK’s gutless House of Commons” had taken a “major step on the road to a police state in the UK—a horrifying encroachment on human rights,” he wrote. “This introduction of state-of-emergency-instruments and powers during ‘normal’ times is a constitutional outrage.”

The correctness of the police-state analogy is further underscored by the fact that it was the police and security services which have been the prime advocates and movers of the extended powers—and no doubt insisted that Brown bite the bullet. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland Sir Hugh Orde, and former Metropolitan police head of anti-terrorist operations Peter Clarke were amongst those members of the security apparatus who made their insistence on the extension known.

The implications of such draconian and arbitrary powers have already been seen in the arrests of Nottingham University student Rizwaan Sabir and university staff member Hicham Yezza. Both are high-profile political campaigners at the university and have been particularly active in anti-war protests. Sabir’s “crime” was to download, from a US government web site, a copy of an Al Qaeda training manual, which he was using to research his dissertation on “the American approach to Al Qaeda in Iraq.” After he emailed the document to Yezza to print it for him, the pair were arrested and held without charge for six days. Released on May 20 without charge, Yezza was rearrested on immigration matters and is currently facing deportation from the country.

In an unprecedented move, Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5, released a public statement on the 42-day extension. While maintaining the secret service’s guise of political neutrality, the purpose of the statement was to refute claims that MI5 was opposed to the extension. MI5 “are not, and never have been, the appropriate body to advise the government on pre-charge detention time limits,” Evans wrote, continuing “except to say that we recognise the challenge posed for the police service by the increasingly complex and international character of some recent terrorist cases.”

Two leading former spies with MI6, responsible for international espionage, also made rare public statements in favour of 42 days. Baroness Park stated that “MPs will be very irresponsible if they take out the 42 days,” and would put spies’ “lives at risk,” while Lady Ramsay, a former member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said, “Voting against 42 days increases the odds in favour of the terrorists.”

The Crazy Politics of 42 days

Ellie Keen — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:33:32 +0000

Who would be a Labour MP this week? After brutal whipping and endless spin about “toughing it out” while “offering concessions”, it still boils down to this. Is it right, or necessary, or productive to our safety, to detain a suspected person for six weeks without charge – without knowing what they are accused of?

Some view this as a trial of political machismo. Liberty does not. Political parties play a part in democracy, but I respect the conscience, courage and conviction of individual parliamentarians more. I will always regret the crazy politics that “42 days” has become and our inability – despite endless efforts – to persuade the Brown government towards a break with the recent past.

Liberty colleagues have had discussions with Labour MPs who have been thoughtful in their engagement. My confidence is such that I believe on a free vote in the Commons, the 42-day measure would be easily defeated. But at the fag end of the misnamed, misjudged “war on terror”, abortion time limits are left to the conscience and detention time limits are not. The margin will be tight.

Some MPs have expressed fears that this issue might become a running sore for their party. As Europe split the Conservatives in the 1990s, so civil liberties might create a fault line through Labour. Government admissions that there is no need for an extension have left many angry about being forced to revisit this issue so soon after the vote in 2005.

In democracies where people are presumed innocent, we arrest on suspicion, charge with evidence and convict after proof. These principles were built on centuries of struggle. Even this tradition risks hundreds or thousands of people being plucked from their beds and detained under terror laws. A smaller number will be charged with something, and some eventually convicted.

Humans – including policemen – are imperfect. Hence the age-old wisdom of prompt charging following arrest, so even the most heinous murders must result in charge within four days. Hence the one-day limit in Canada, two in the US, and periods of a week or less all over the free world. Ministers have been quick to try to rubbish my organisation’s extensive research into comparisons but have produced none of their own. The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, is in no doubt where the UK stands. He says the “British government’s suggestion to allow terrorism suspects to be detained for 42 days without charge would be way out of line with equivalent detention limits elsewhere in Europe”.

After charge, innocents may still be held for months pending trial for a complex conspiracy, but at least they know why. At least they and their family and lawyers can prepare a defence in the hope of vindication in court. Contrast the nightmare of a thousand hours in custody followed by unceremonious release back into the community. How will that help social cohesion and national unity? Ministers claim to have consulted “senior Muslims”. My concern is with the junior ones who become alienated and radicalised.

The security minister Admiral Lord West was both provocative and practical when he said people should “snitch” on those they suspect of involvement in terrorist activity. How much intelligence might be lost in the anxiety that providing information risks an innocent neighbour disappearing for six weeks? I debated this on the radio with a government loyalist. “Six weeks’ detention is not so long,” he said, “a school holiday”. Before I could react, the Irish-born broadcaster cut in: “I was detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.” It clearly hadn’t felt like a holiday to him.

So, on the government’s own case, there is no need for this power; but they wheel out selected policemen who say there may be a need one day. They are slow to explore a range of less sexy alternatives to the constant escalation of the detention arms race.

Serving police officers have also told Liberty of their opposition to the government’s plans. But most fear recrimination if they go public. The former chief constable of the West Midlands, Lord Dear, is no stranger to terrorist threats. He was personally targeted by the IRA and yet calls extended detention a “propaganda coup for al-Qaida”. In his experience the “best course for a terrorist was to provoke a government to overreact to a threat by eroding civil liberties, increasing executive powers and diminishing due process by the denial of justice”.

One week from the vote, we are told ministers can have their authoritarian cake and eat it with sugar-free “concessions”. The home secretary even says her last-minute amendments transform the 42-day power into a liberal enhancement of existing emergency powers. The joint parliamentary committee on human rights disagrees: “The safeguards in the bill, even after the potential government amendments, are inadequate to protect individuals against the risk of arbitrary detention.”

Confidence tricks catch only those unwilling to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. First, the “grave and exceptional terror threat” is broad enough to catch any suspected terror plot anywhere in the world, rather than a genuine emergency in Britain.

Second, the threat is a phrase for a statement to the Commons, not a legal precondition for detention. That means that the power to extend detention is still triggered by individual cases rather than general emergencies. Parliament becomes a farcical star chamber charged with discussing individual cases without prejudicing potential trials.

Finally, there is no judicial review of the decision to turn on the power. The only role left to a judge would be to authorise detention week on week without evidence or charges to examine.

On morning radio Jacqui Smith asked for our trust. Since when was trust in today’s home secretary a basis for suspending the rule of law? It is part of her job to plan for horrific scenarios. It is the job of her parliamentary colleagues to consider her proposals in future home secretaries’ hands. This is not a vote of confidence in this government, but about confidence in parliament’s ability to hold all governments to account.

Who would be a Labour MP next week? Vote against this posture and face the whips in the morning. Or vote for it and face your grandchildren forever.

Shami Chakrabarti is director of Liberty