Pick a Number, Any Number

The Home Affairs and Justice debate on Tuesday’s Queens Speech was dominated by Government proposals to “seek consensus” on increasing the maximum period of pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects. Yet such a consensus will be difficult, if not impossible, to come by. Yesterday, Members of the House from all corners and sides questioned the fuzzy thinking behind Jacqui Smith’s proposals.

The Shadow Home Secretary reminded us that “our freedom was bought at a very high price. We on this side will not give that freedom away without very good reason indeed.”   So, is there good reason? What is the basis for the planned extension of pre-charge detention? One might expect that the police have been experiencing great difficulty in compiling sufficient evidence to charge terrorist suspects within 28 days. But the Home Secretary admits that there has not been once case where they have been up against the wire. The basis for extension is that, due to “trends of increasing complexity” the Home Secretary can imagine a circumstance where the police might need more than 28 days. There are whole rafts of circumstances I can imagine on a great range of topics, but should we legislate on wholly hypothetical situations?  

With no evidence on which to base more draconian measures, how would the Home Secretary like to go about this extension? Will the Government repeat the tactics of 2005 by seeking a very high figure in order to get a compromise extension somewhere in the middle? Why is the figure of 56 days being bandied around by Government Ministers? What’s the basis for it? Because it’s 28 multiplied by two and it sounds nice? Sir Ian Blair (he of the “if you’ve got the power to remove me, go ahead” attitude to public service) thinks the right amount of time we should detain potentially innocent people should be “somewhere between 50 and 90 days”.

What fantastically useless advice!   So, pick a figure. 90? 77? 56? 49? Whatever the Government decide, this issue is, for good reason, going to dominate the political scene for some time…

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