The ex-head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 says British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plans for tougher new terrorism laws are unnecessary.
Making her first speech at the House of Lords since being appointed to Britain’s upper legislative chamber last month, Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said on Tuesday she did not support the government’s plans.
Manningham-Buller was the head of the domestic security service from 2002 to last year and spent more than 30 years working in British intelligence.
Brown wants to increase from 28 days to 42 days the time police have to hold suspected terrorists without charging them. He says police officers increasingly need more time to charge suspects because of the complexity of scouring computers, sifting through phone records and chasing down leads across the globe.
Lawmakers in the House of Commons narrowly approved the plans last month, voting in favor of the proposed terrorism laws by nine votes.
Several of Brown’s Labour Party rebelled, leaving him to rely on the votes of nine minor party legislators from Northern Ireland.
Peers in the House of Lords, who are considered more likely to reject Brown’s draft laws, will vote later this year.
“I have weighed up the balance between the right to life — the most important civil liberty — the fact that there is no such thing as complete security and the importance of our hard-won civil liberties,” Manningham-Buller said. “On a matter of principle, I cannot support 42 days pre-charge detention.”
If lawmakers in the House of Lords reject Brown’s proposals, the British leader must decide whether to deploy rarely used powers to pass the plans into law without the consent of the upper chamber.
“The Government is putting at risk, in a reactionary way, rights and freedoms that we have defended for centuries,” said opposition Conservative peer Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, an ex-chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Since the current 28-day limit came into force in 2006, police have held six suspects for the maximum time allowed; three were released without charge and three were prosecuted.
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