At the Commons Home Affairs select committee today, both the DPP Sir Ken MacDonald and the last Attorney General Lord Goldsmith have said they see no need to extend pre-charge detention of terror suspects beyond 28 days.
Damningly for the government, Goldsmith said his view was based on the evidence he’d seen when in government – though he accepted things might have http://www.raybani.com/ changed since then, surely if something radical had, the government would be telling us very clearly what that thing was. And don’t forget, it’s only a few months since he was attending Cabinet. Goldsmith said he opposed an extension to 90 days, and would have resigned had Tony Blair’s government pressed the issue to a vote in the Lords.
The BBC website has a clip of Goldsmith’s argument against a further extension – I think he makes a decent point, that the reasonableness of police suspicions about someone – the basis on which they are detained – must gradually drain away with time if no evidence is found on which to charge them of a serious offence.
Can the government hope to win this argument, when old friends like Goldsmith are against them?
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