Flawed in 42 ways
The former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller, told the House of Lords that she objected to the bill to enable the security services to hold suspected terrorists for 42 days without charge because:
I don’t see, on a principled basis, as well as a practical one, that these proposals are in any way workable.
She also pointed out various other obvious home truths – that Labour don’t appear to get – that there is a “balance between the right to life”, that “the fact [is] that there is no such thing as complete security” and that “the importance of our hard-won civil liberties” massively outweighs any potential benefits of this law.
This intervention may well mean that Garbo’s declaration that “David Davis has failed“, well, fails.
People seem to have completely ignored the appalling quality of the legislation itself which, as she pointed out, makes this whole situation totally impractical.
But why won’t Cameron commit to reversing the decision?
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
This has very little if nothing to do with Davis’s actions. The Bill was always going to receive a frosty reception in the Lords. If anything, this backs up the assumption that what Davis did was miscalculated – he should have left it to the Lords and then himself as a future Home Secretary to sort out.
Unfortunately his action became bigger than the issue.
Remember – I am not saying that what Davis did was wrong in principle, I am saying what he did has not worked.
If he returns to parliament (as I am sure he will) next week, it will almost certainly be with less people having voted for him. From then on he will be a thorn, not an asset, in Cameron’s side. And all for making very little difference – if anything he smothered the issue.
[...] It may be the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but it’s not the answer to this. And the Lords have voted it down by 309 to [...]
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