How about this for rationcination from our PM. It’s from the Observer of Sunday, January 6, 2008.
Question:
Why are you pushing so hard with your plans to extend to 42 days the period in which a terror suspect can be held without charge? Many members of your own party, the Lib Dems, the Tories, the DPP, the former attorney general are all expressing doubts if not outright opposition.
Answer
A few months ago Liberty published its proposals and said that there were circumstances in which they themselves understood you might have to go beyond 28 days. They proposed using the Civil Contingencies Act to do so. They recognised therefore that there are circumstances in which you may have as a result of the complexity and sophistication to detain people beyond 28 days. Now what I said to that was look, if in principle people right across the political spectrum agree that it’s necessary, in certain instances – unique sometimes perhaps, or special at least and understood to be rare – then we ought to try and find a way and a consensus for doing that.
