42 days do not add up

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just listened to Martha Karney's excellent World at One over my soup. She covered the appearance of the Home Secretary before the House Committee on the 42 days proposal. It is mad as well as bad. The use of parliament as a safeguard is preposterous and cynical. If MPs fall for such a blatant attempt by the executive to appeal to their self-importance while regarding them with contempt they will have only themselves to blame for growing public ridicule. The key question remains, if the police have sufficiently reasonable suspicion to want to hold someone for longer than 28 days, so much so that they will go to the Home Secretary to ask for a special session of the House of Commons even if the vote is only held after the full "42" days, then why can't the police charge the person or persons concerned? The Director of Public Prosecutions himself says they can. What this additional power is really about, it seems to me, is something altogether more dangerous. If, as we all hope we do not, we suffer another terrorist attack this proposal opens the way for the police to hold a large number of people just in case without having to charge them. Then, stirring tabloid hysteria, they ask the Home Secretary for powers to hold them even longer before releasing most of them, dragging parliament into a process of supporting either 'our government' or 'terrorist suspects' an impossible choice which is all too likely to deliver what will be perceived as a collective and indiscriminate punishment.