Concessions over 42 day pre charge limit
Gordon Brown has little real concept of what is good for the country because his mind is too pre-occupied by what is good for him and his government - in a nutshell he will do anything to retain power.
Hence, the growing suspicions about possible concessions in the fifth anti-terrorism Bill since 2000, Brown and Jacqui Smith appear to have conjured up a form of legislation which they hope will placate members of the Parliamentary Labour Party and involve bail and electronic tagging after 28 days. Having headed off Labour rebels who threatened to defeat the Finance Bill over the 10p tax rate it seems incredible that Smith and Brown can somehow offer backdating of your life if we happen to detain you for longer than 28 days without a charge
Either “charge or release” says Shami Chakrabarti, and don’t put “reserve powers” into the hands of the DPP, a Chief Constable, and the Home Secretary, because if you do, any decisions they make about exceptional circumstances will soon be seen as a precedent by some judges and illegal by others, seeing as the decisions were not voted upon by Parliament. This clause is not something that is worth losing a fight over Mr. Brown, for the sake of national unity, and to improve the chances of intelligence gathering among minority communities, and improving the success rate of police recruitment in these communities, you must drop the notion altogether!
We already have a period of pre-charge detention which is longer than that in the majority of western liberal democracies, we really have no need for an extension, and the DPP has already confirmed this and many parliamentarians of all colours are deeply disturbed by the prospects of building the apparatus of a police state. Let it go!
Wise sage Simon Jenkins argues that the raft of anti-terror measures recently taken on board are having the effect of killing the British justice system, and that only a handful of judges are protecting our centuries old liberties from an executive determined to chip them away bit by bit in the poorly (but aptly) named TWAT - The War Against Terror. His article outlines some the more bizarre and ridiculous cases which have come before British courts in recent years
Every prediction that Britain’s burgeoning terrorism laws would pollute justice is vindicated by these cases. The concept of preemptive imprisonment, like that of preemptive war, should have no place in an open society. Yet it tallies with revelations last week that ministers, who claim to be in control of security, no longer regard lawyer/client relations as sacred and that prison interviews are routinely bugged by the police. Officers who object, such as the whistleblower Mark Kearney, can expect to lose their jobs. The authorities now have extraordinary powers to arrest and convict Britons on evidence that may be tainted by American interrogation techniques or by the sheer ignorance of the police and security services.
It is to this secret establishment that Smith wants to give discretionary power to incarcerate suspects without charge for an undecided number of months. It is this establishment that is still determined not to reveal the extent of its wiretap activities in court. It is this that has equipped Britain with the most extensive network of surveillance in the free world. It is this that intends to computerise the personal, occupational, medical and family records of the entire nation, on bases that everyone knows will be insecure.
It is time that we stood back and took a calm and collected look at what is perceived to be “the threat” that Brown, and Blair before him told us we needed protecting against. Whatever it is, it can be nowhere near as great as the the threat we faced in 1939 with millions of heavily armed German forces facing us across the English Channel, yet Parliament, even then, was reluctant to introduce internment (for the safety of those who were on the wrong side of the ideological fence) and certainly did not introduce laws that removed the requirement to bring a criminal charge within a reasonable time. Neither in the 1970’s and 80’s did we need such draconian liberty threatening methods to deal with the bombers from Ireland, yet their threat was there, and probably in larger measures than we have seen since 9/11 in this country.
No serious person can imagine a Britain conquered and ruled by fundamentalist Islam. It is pure fiction. Any fanatic can set off bombs, as once could the Irish. The cult of the suicide bomber enhances the menace of explosive devices and that requires more assiduous policing. But such few bombs as get through are the price we pay for a free society. Democracy is never a free lunch.
Yet Blair and Brown keep repeating the mantra that we should not allow the “threat” to destroy British values and democracy, perhaps that’s why the government is taking away the choice and doing it for them? Using legislations that destroys centuries of liberties for the sake of an ill defined “threat”.
A final word from Mr. Jenkins, with whom I am in almost complete agreement;
But none of this justifies collapsing the values of justice and fairness on which British law has long been based. The paradox, espoused by the present government and mostly unchallenged by the opposition, that defending values requires infringing them, is unjustified. That habeas corpus must be restricted, that mens rea must be suspended, that reading and talking and thinking can be crimes, all are ideas so abhorrent to British people that one might imagine them the product of an Al-Qaeda plot inside the Home Office.
This week the only conclusion I can reach is one I would never have predicted. Thank goodness for judges with the guts to save British values from the present crop of British politicians.
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