[News] House arrest without trial to be rushed through in days

[News at freedomarchives.org]

House arrest without trial to be rushed through in days
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 22/02/2005)

The Bill to allow British and foreign terrorist 
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/27/nterr27.xml>suspects 
to be detained without trial under house arrest is to be rushed through the 
Commons and the Lords within a fortnight, the Government announced yesterday.

Ministers were immediately accused of treating Parliament with contempt.

MPs and peers will be given only four days to debate what one Labour 
backbencher called the "greatest attack on the liberty of British people 
for 300 years".

The legislation, to be published today, will introduce a new system of 
control orders ranging in severity depending on the perceived risk posed by 
an individual.

At the most severe, the Government has proposed that suspects should be 
confined to "their premises" with visitors strictly controlled by the Home 
Office and without access to computers or telephones.

The decision to steamroller such a controversial measure on to the statute 
book with so little debate caused uproar at Westminster, with both Tory and 
Labour MPs condemning the procedure.

The Bill will receive a second reading in the Commons tomorrow and the 
remaining stages, including the committee in which there is supposed to be 
line-by-line scrutiny, will be held next Monday. The Lords has been given 
two days - March 7 and 9 - to consider the Bill.

The justification given for such a tight timetable was that the powers to 
detain foreign terrorist suspects without trial, under emergency 
legislation introduced in 2001, lapse on March 14.

The Government would need to renew those powers to avoid releasing 10 
foreign nationals still imprisoned under their terms. But Peter Hain, the 
Leader of the Commons, told MPs that the law lords' ruling last month that 
the detentions were unlawful made this impossible.

Without new legislation, he said, the terrorist suspects would be able to 
walk out of prison and that the Government had a responsibility to defend 
the country from the threat of suicide bombers.

However, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told MPs last month that if it 
were not possible to get new legislation through Parliament quickly enough, 
"I will seek to renew the powers for the limited time necessary to put the 
new arrangements in place."

The Government has even published a draft statutory instrument to renew the 
detention powers for a further nine months, something the Tories are 
prepared to support while the new Bill is given more time for scrutiny. 
Conservatives have 
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/19/nterr19.xml>denounced 
the proposed Prevention of Terrorism Bill as "fundamentally flawed" and 
some Labour backbenchers signalled that their support cannot be relied on.

Bob Marshall-Andrews, MP for Medway, said the measures originally outlined 
by Mr Clarke would represent "the greatest attack on the liberties of the 
British people for 300 years". Andrew Mackinlay, MP for Thurrock, was 
unwilling to support legislation that kept people in their homes on the 
"decision of a politician".

Mr Hain said that since the Bill was replacing just a narrow part of the 
2001 Act, the timetable for debate was adequate. He also assured critics 
that it would address their concerns over handing detention powers to the 
executive, indicating that there would be a significant role for the 
judiciary. Oliver Heald, the shadow Commons leader, accused the Government 
of trying to "ram" the Bill through.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "What is being proposed is 
treating Parliament with contempt. Here is a massive change in the 
traditional standards of justice and the rights of every British citizen 
for hundreds of years being dealt with in a few days."

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "Eight hundred years of 
the right to a fair trial in this country could be overturned within 14 
days. The presumption of innocence, like innocence itself, is easier lost 
than regained."


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