Anthony Barnett (London, OK): While Sunny Hundal tries to gather everyone (including a 5,000 facebook users) around 'Not a day Longer' and Shami Chakrabarti's Liberty issues pungent press statements and Henry Porter warns and fumes and Stuart Weir posts in OK, the government inches forward. The latest "concession" to quote the spin - which even got into the headline as if it was the report of a fact - of this morning's Guardian story by Nicholas Watt, is a jaw-dropping disgrace.
Jacqui Smith is to offer a concession to backbench Labour MPs in an attempt to avoid a damaging rebellion against the government's plans to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days.
Government sources indicated yesterday that the home secretary was prepared to accept a backbench amendment which would give parliament a far greater role in monitoring such detentions.
Under the proposal, MPs would be allowed to debate a decision to invoke the emergency powers within 10 days of a government decision. At the moment MPs would only be given a say within 30 days, a proposal seen as largely meaningless by critics...
One government source said: "We are getting there slowly. The 10-day idea will help colleagues who need to be nudged. We accept that the diehard opponents will not sign up."
The government is fighting to avoid a damaging defeat in the Commons when the anti-terror bill is voted on at the end of next month...
The new amendment is being drawn up by Martin Salter, Labour MP for Reading West. He is a member of the home affairs select committee, which argued last year that the government had failed to "make a convincing case that the current limit of 28 days is inadequate".
Salter says it is time to move beyond debating the number of days. "We have got stuck in a sterile debate on the number of days. We need to move the debate to ask: is it parliament or the judiciary that should call the home secretary to account? It is MPs that need to have that oversight."
There are few things more insufferable than MPs telling us how they are the guardians of our liberty and all the great things about Britain while the executive laughs up its sleeve and voters snort with derision. Salter is preparing to be a sell out. Of course the judiciary with greater independence, less needs for jobs, and under stricter guidelines, who have to provide the oversight not MPs. Just this weekend I ran a piece on how even Michael White seems to be shocked at the facility with which MPs were parted from their oversight powers by the Government. What is serious about what is happening is that the government are buying votes by making paper concessions to ensure they have a majority however slender.
