Britain's upper house of parliament rejected a proposal to tighten anti-terrorism laws today, saying it could not support suspects being held for up to six weeks without charge.
In a vote carried by 309 to 118, the House of Lords resoundingly defeated the government's Counter-Terrorism Bill, which would have allowed police to hold suspects for 42 days before charging or releasing them. The current limit is 28 days.
The defeat is a setback for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labour party but had been expected following criticism of the bill from senior members of the upper house, including Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former British intelligence chief.
Opponents, including many Labour members of the Lords, saw the proposed law change as violating Britain's cherished civil liberties and out of line with other Western democracies where detention limits are far shorter.
"This attempt to appear tough on terrorism, I believe, is a shabby charade which is unworthy of a democratic process and we should reject it," Geoffrey Dear, a former senior police officer, told the Lords ahead of the vote.
The government could invoke a piece of legislation, the Parliament Act, to try to push the bill through over the Lords' objections, but such a move is considered unlikely given the size of the defeat.
Instead, the legislation is likely to be quietly dropped while Mr Brown and his government concentrate on tackling the global financial crisis.
The Lords' rejection is, however, a setback for the British prime minister, who has repeatedly stated his determination to push through tighter terrorism laws following a series of successful and foiled militant attacks in Britain in recent years.
Former prime minister Tony Blair had tried to increase the detention limit to 90 days but suffered a crushing defeat in the House of Commons on the issue, the first time he had been defeated in the lower house.
Under Mr Brown, the Commons narrowly passed the 42-day bill in June after the Labour government put heavy pressure on sceptical members of its own party to give their backing.
It argued police could need the extra time to question suspects if faced with exceptionally complex investigations into a major attack or plot. Suicide attackers killed 52 people in London in 2005, and authorities say they have thwarted a number of serious conspiracies before and since. Civil liberties campaigners welcomed the Lords' vote.
"The upper house has demonstrated why Britain is the oldest unbroken democracy on earth," said Shami Chakrabarti, the director of rights group Liberty.
"Common decency says we don't lock people up for six weeks without charge. Common sense should tell the government that when you're in a hole and you've lost the argument - stop digging."
Reuters