42 Days of Fudge
The government is, apparently, considering concessions on the 42 Day Detentions. These will be much the same as the concessions over the 10p tax band, I fear. That is, a meaningless fudge designed to allow MPs to live with their consciences while failing to address key objections to the measure:
Ministers want to extend the limit suspects can be held without charge to 42 days, which many Labour MPs oppose.
To avoid losing a Commons vote, the government is to suggest halving the period during which police can enact these extra powers from 60 to 30 days.
To translate: special powers to detain suspects for 42 days without charge will remain on the cards. The only thing that’s changed in when police are allowed to use those powers, not that they’ll have them.
Which is a shame, as most objections to the bill are over the very fact that police could hold people without charge for 42 days.
Further evidence that the government hopes to pass the bill by fudge and fudge alone comes here:
The government wants to secure the support of the nine Democratic Unionist Party MPs for its plans.
One possibility might be with offers of seats on the intelligence and security select committee.
Or it could be by ensuring income from the sale of surplus Army land in Northern Ireland stays locally, rather than going to the Treasury.
Now, a test for you: spot the part of that deals with persuading those MPs with rational (hah…) argument rather than making shady backroom deals that have nothing to do with the substance of the bill.
Did you find it? No, me neither…
Brown says he’d rather “do the right thing” and lose than back down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to realise that the right thing is to lose.
Posted in: Bad Policy, Fascism, The Home Office
Leave a Reply