Downing Street Says » 42 Days Detention

» Thursday, January 24, 2008

42 Days Detention

Asked if the Prime Minister would be saying anything about 42 days detention, the PMS said that we were not anticipating the Prime Minister saying anything today, but the Home Secretary had been out and about speaking for the Government. The Prime Minister had been speaking about this at the weekend and he was perfectly willing to talk about it at any opportunity, but he was not doing anything public today.

Asked if the Prime Minister had met, or would be meeting, with backbench MPs regarding 42 days as the Home Secretary had been doing, the PMS said that the Home Secretary had been meeting with backbench MPs and that the Prime Minister met with backbench MPs all the time, for example, at the Parliamentary Committee once a week; there were lots of opportunities for the Prime Minister to meet backbench MPs and for backbench MPs to raise matters of topical concern.

Asked if the Government felt it was winning the argument regarding 42 days, the PMS said yes, we did think that people were beginning to see the Government’s case. The proposals that we were setting out later struck the right balance between the need to deal with terrorist cases and the concerns that people had expressed about individuals’ liberty. As was said yesterday, the differences between the view of the Prime Minister and the Government, and the various participants in this debate, were much less than was sometimes portrayed; we should not, and the Government would not, exaggerate those differences. We did believe that there was a consensus emerging around some of the underlying principals underpinning the Government’s proposals.

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