Brown calls for terror support

The Prime Minister has asked opposition parties to back Government plans to extend the maximum time terrorist suspects can be held without charge to 42 days.

The Government is expected to publish its controversial Counter Terrorism Bill this week and Gordon Brown said he believed that it was still possible to reach a cross-party consensus on the issue.

But Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has warned that his party is ready to combine with the Tories and Labour rebels to vote against the measure in Parliament.

He said that while the Government was "sailing close to the wind" in the Commons, it was facing almost certain defeat in the Lords where it has no overall majority.

Mr Brown insisted all the main parties accepted there could be circumstances in which suspects would need to be detained beyond the current 28-day limit.

He said: "It may be a multiple terrorist plot, it may be a whole series of complex investigations that need to be done in the context of there being major terrorist incidents. I believe that it is possible to build a consensus on that."

The Government has offered to allow Parliament to oversee the detention of terrorist suspects but Mr Clegg described that as a "false concession".

He said: "When you look at the detail, it leads to the absurd position that you could have someone locked up for that longer period of time and Parliament would only be able to decide on whether that was justified or not after that longer period of detention has already expired. That is not a meaningful concession."

In 2005, Labour MPs blocked Tony Blair's attempt to extend the limit to 90 days and Mr Clegg believes the same rebel MPs could vote against the Government again.

He said: "I am pretty clear that the Government is sailing very close to the wind. The numbers game comes down to what the Government manages to do with their own troops, with their own MPs."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith insisted the Government had moved "quite considerably" in response to the criticisms levelled at the legislation.

She said: "What we are proposing is a reserve power that, if the circumstances necessitated, it would allow an application to hold somebody for longer than 28 days.

"The 42 days is not some sort of target - it's a safeguard, it's an absolute maximum.

"We do have to ask ourselves whether or not we are just going to leave responding until we face an emergency to legislate or whether we are going to legislate calmly now.

"I think we are legislating in a way that is proportionate, that actually involves no change to the status quo unless a set of circumstances arise."

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