Brown under pressure as Lords prepares to reject 42-day law

Nicholas Watt and Sam Jones The Guardian, Monday 13 October 2008 Article history

Controversial plans to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days are likely to be rejected overwhelmingly by the House of Lords today, piling fresh pressure on Gordon Brown to abandon the proposal.

The strength of feeling among peers is highlighted today by Lord Goldsmith, Tony Blair's long-serving attorney general. In an article for the Guardian, Goldsmith writes: "This pernicious provision should be removed from this bill now. I regard it as not only unnecessary but also counterproductive; and we should fight to protect the liberties the terrorists would take from us, not destroy them ourselves. This proposal is wrong in principle and dangerous in practice."

Peers will today have their first chance to vote on the detention plan when the government's counterterrorism bill is debated at committee stage in the upper house. It is widely expected that peers will reject the measure in large numbers, with Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and cross-bench peers joining forces.

Rejection by the Lords would mean that Brown would have to muster a majority in the Commons for a series of new votes if he wants to see the measure passed into law. Peers are prepared for a lengthy session of parliamentary "ping pong", the process in which an amended bill is thrown back and forth from one chamber to another for repeated votes. If this ends in deadlock, Brown would have to wait a year before using the Parliament Act to force the measure through against the will of the Lords.

Campaigners against 42-day detention believe that Brown is not prepared for such a battle as he cannot guarantee another Commons majority. The measure was passed in the Commons in June by only nine votes after the nine Democratic Unionist MPs supported the government. Since then, the number of opposition MPs has increased by two. John Howell replaced Boris Johnson, who had already stood down as MP for Henley and therefore did not vote, and John Mason won Glasgow East for the SNP from Labour.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: "We are all learning the lessons of abandoning ethics in the marketplace. But it is just as dangerous to abandon them in the fight against terrorism. We hope and believe that the Lords will reject the discredited plan and that in the spirit of national unity the government will then drop it."

The vote comes as 42 British writers come together to make plain their anger at the detention plans. Among those involved in the campaign, which is coordinated by Liberty, are Philip Pullman, Monica Ali, Julian Barnes, Ian Rankin, Alain de Botton, Ali Smith and AL Kennedy. Each has produced work attacking the legislation, which is published online at 42writers.com.