In a vote yesterday, peers rejected the government's proposals for 42-day detention without charge, by a majority of some 191 votes. There are currently 732 members of the House of Lords, the bulk split between Conservative (201), Labour (213) and Cross-bench (203) groups. The actual voting numbers were 309 against to 118 in favour.
So what happens next? Well, in principle the Lords can only delay the passage of a bill, not prevent it: if the House of Commons wants to do so, it can force a bill through even if that bill has been repeatedly voted down by the Lords. However, in practice, repeated rejection by the Lords usually leads to the bill being altered to make it more acceptable - or to the proposal being withdrawn altogether. That's what has happened in this case. The government has removed the 42-day proposal from the Counter-Terrorism Bill and re-drafted it as a separate one-pager, to be shelved in the Home Secretary's office and brought out again in case of an emergency.
Some of you may be wondering why they didn't just do that in the first place. After all, the proposal's past wouldn't lead one to expect anything other than a very rough ride. One earlier vote, on 9/11/2005, on a 90-day detention period was the occasion of Mr Blair's first defeat in the House of Commons, and most recently, the current bill only passed through the Commons by 9 votes. In that vote, 36 Labour MPs rebelled against their own whips, forcing the government to rely on the votes of 9 Democratic Unionist Party MPs. Both the Government and the DUP strenuously denied that any kind of a deal had been done to 'buy' their votes. For those of a more sceptical turn of mind, this Guardian article suggests some of the areas in which the interests of the DUP could have offered some leverage to anyone inclined to use it.
Even as late as last week, Gordon Brown was sticking to a hard line on the bill, maintaining that 'it was the right thing do to' in the face of advice from his own ministers, who were apparently warning that an attempt to force the bill through against the wish of the Lords would be "politically suicidal". As today's BBC article points out, among those advising against the bill were Lord Irving, Lord Falconer and Lord Goldsmith, the first two of whom have served as Lord Chancellor and the third as Attorney General - and presumably all three of them must have had a pretty clear idea of the prevailing sentiment among their... peers (no pun intended).
What of that shelved one-pager, then? The Home Secretary lambasted opponents of the original bill in the wake of its defeat, accusing them of ignoring the terrorist threat to public safety, and preferring to 'cross their fingers and hope for the best'. So if her dire warnings were to be justified, what would be the government's swiftest route to action? To exercise powers which are already on the statue books, or hold off on detaining anyone until the shelved bill can be dusted off and rushed through parliament.
In the face of that kind of logic, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, described the failed proposal in these terms: "The push for 42 days' detention was more about ministers posturing and looking tough than it ever was about fighting terrorism."
He might think that. I, of course, couldn't possibly comment.
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