Lords vote will hinder 42-day detention limit

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last night insisted the Government's controversial bid to increase detention without charge to 42 days was correct.

She said in an emergency statement to MPs, after the House of Lords voted overwhelmingly against the measure, that the measure was badly needed.

The Government will bring forward a new Bill, to allow police to hold suspects for up to 42 days before they have to be actually charged. Ms Smith said her priority was the protection of the British people, and it was not good enough just to "cross our fingers and hope for the best".

And she insisted the most important liberty was that of the individual "not to be blown up in British streets or in British skies".

Earlier yesterday Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman had insisted the extension from 28 to 42 days was "in the national interest".

But after the landslide 191-vote Lords defeat, there were renewed pleas for the Government to drop the measure.

Former West Midlands Police chief constable Lord Dear, who led the fight against 42 days in the Upper Chamber, said: "This was a victory for common sense, decency and the rule of law. We hope that this is the last we see of this ill-judged proposal."

And Tory security spokeswoman Baroness Neville-Jones said the vote had been decisive, with all sides of the House against the measure.

During the debate Labour peer Lady Mallalieu, a barrister, said: "It is an essential ingredient of living in a free country that we are free from the fear of being locked up without charge."

And former Labour Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, a close ally of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, said he opposed the legislation.

He said: "If I thought that this provision for 42 days would make any difference at all in the fight against terrorism I would unhesitatingly support it."

But former Cabinet Minister Lord Tebbit, who was seriously injured when the IRA bombed the Tory conference in Brighton in 1984, and whose wife was permanently disabled, backed the plan.

His party might "come to rue this day" if the vote was lost, he warned, asking: "If the lack of this provision leads to the police to fail to prevent a major terrorist outrage, what then?"

Stroud MP David Drew, one of the Labour rebels in June, has said he will vote against 42 days again, and does not believe the Parliament Act could be used on the legislation.

He told the Daily Press: "It will go down unless we have a proper debate on what is the appropriate time.

"There is a problem, but just saying 90 days, or 28, or 42, is not the way to do it."

Mr Blair suffered his first Commons defeat over a bid to extend detention to 90 days in 2005. Parliament agreed instead to a 28 day limit.

Mr Brown's attempt to extend it to 42 days scraped through the Commons by just nine votes, despite a rebellion by 36 Labour MPs.