Counter-terrorism policy and human rights (eleventh report): 42 days and public emergencies, twenty-first report of session 2007-08, report, together with formal minutes and written evidence

This report comments on the adequacy of the additional safeguards that the Government has indicated it intends to bring forward to meet the human rights concerns about its proposal to extend the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 42 days. The report explains the Committee’s conclusion that the additional safeguards are inadequate to protect individuals against the risk of arbitrary detention.The Committee recommends that the Government provide Parliament with the evidence on which it relies when it says that the threat from terrorism is growing. It also calls for information about the use made of the extended power to detain without charge for up to 28 days since it was last renewed in July 2007. No amount of additional parliamentary or judicial safeguards can render the proposal for a reserve power of 42 days’ pre-charge detention compatible with the right of a terrorism suspected to be informed ‘promptly’ of the charge against him under Article 5(2) ECHR.The Government has not included in the Counter-Terrorism Bill a provision to improve the existing arrangements for parliamentary review of the operation of extended pre-charge detention and the report puts forward amendments to the Bill to improve such arrangements. In the Committee’s view the recent examples of questionable information sharing by the intelligence services, which risk making the UK complicit in torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment, show that there is a need for substantive legal safeguards to guarantee against the arbitrary and disproportionate use of the power to disclose and use such information. The Committee proposes amendments to strengthen safeguards.