But only by a scrape. Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith won their commons vote on the reserve power to extend terror suspects’ detention up to 42 days. They got the votes of a few vital Labour backbenchers and of the […]

I’ve had the debate on in the background this afternoon (while marking a never-ending pile of exam papers on free movement of goods and persons) – and it’s not been a bad one. Bill Cash has obsessively been intervening to […]

Jacqui Smith is on her feet as I write, opening the third reading debate on the Counter-Terrorism Bill: at about 7 o’clock tonight MPs will finally vote on the government’s proposed reserve power to extend detention of terror suspects without […]

It was probably predictable that at some point the public and political debate about this bill, and the proposed extension of pre-charge detention of terror suspects to a potential maximum of 42 days, would be diverted away from the merits […]

The government’s Counter-Terrorism Bill got through second reading unopposed yesterday: the real action will come in votes on specific amendments at a later stage. You can find the Bill and explanatory notes to it, here, and here’s the […]