Robin Wilton's esoterica

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, continues to pave the way for next week's debate and vote on proposals to extend from 28 to 42 days the period for which a suspect can be detained without being charged.

The proposals are being described as a sensible precautionary measure, being put in place now so as to be ready in case of future contingencies which might require such powers, against the background of an ongoing terrorist threat.

I supposed that's marginally better than 'knee-jerk' legislation in the wake of (or even during) some future massive terrorist emergency, but it still seems to me to be far from a proportionate measure. Let's just look again at the comparable detention periods in other countries: 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7.5, 12... and 42. As I noted back in December of last year, the 12 is Australia, the 7.5 is Turkey... at the other end of the
scale, the 1 is Canada and the 2s are South Africa, Germany, New
Zealand and the US.

As Turkey has one of the higher numbers among "the rest", let's not forget some of the issues which are making that country's possible accession to the European Union such a contentious topic:

- the EU's frustration over continuing prosecutions under Turkey's Article 301 offence of "insulting Turkishness" (mostly involving the arrest of writers and journalists...);

- a supreme court case over whether or not to ban one of the country's
political parties for alleged breaches of Turkey's laws concerning
secularisation of the state; the party in question is the AK party, which comfortably won elections last July despite fears that it had a hidden Islamist agenda and would fundamentally damage the secular system put in place by the Turkish Republic's architect, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In the run-up to the elections, the army had said it would intervene to protect the republic if necessary.

However, the factors most likely to jeopardise the UK's 42-day proposals are probably closer to home. First, there's the question of whether such legislation, if enacted by the UK parliament, would breach the European Convention on Human Rights (EHCR). Parliament's joint committee on human rights is unequivocal:

"No amount of additional parliamentary or judicial safeguards can
render the proposal for a reserve power of 42 days' pre-charge
detention compatible with the right to liberty in Article 5 of the ECHR
(European Convention of Human Rights)."

Then there's the question of whether the proposals for parliamentary oversight would actually be workable. The last time I looked at this, the proposal was that parliament must debate and vote on individual cases within 30 days (though it was not clear how that 30 day period was to relate to the 42-day period of detention...); the proposal is now that parliament should vote on individual cases within 7 days...

However, that still doesn't change the basics: how on earth can MPs make a valid judgement about the detention of someone who has not yet been charged, but who may later appear in court? Giving them enough information to draw a conclusion must surely prejudice any later trial. And we're told that the extra time is needed so that investigators can unravel complex plots and conspiracies... so surely an informed parliamentary debate would put into the public domain information about the investigation which would be of great benefit to those co-conspirators the law is designed to catch.

The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties both oppose the plan, and its survival hinges on whether the government's concessions have been enough to win over the dissenters in its own ranks.