90 Days Detention.

An interesting intervention in the 28 day / 90 day debate. The reviewer of counter-terrorism laws (who knew we had one?) states that he got to 90 days independently.

Lord Carlile said he had assessed the amount of time police need to conduct investigations and independently arrived at the figure of 90 days - the same period supported by chief constables and the Government, but rejected last week by MPs, who opted instead for a 28-day limit.

Lord Carlile said he knew of "at least two or three" cases where terror suspects were not charged appropriately because police ran out of time to question them. He warned that if the new Bill did not redress that situation, it would not deal with the problem.

How did he reach this conclusion? After all, if the police ran out of time to question them then how do they know that they were charged inappropriately?

Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer, said he had access to secret information not available to MPs.

Ah, now we try to make laws on the basis of secret information that we don’t tell MPs about. Wonderful. Why not just jail people on the basis of secret information we can’t tell them about and be done with it?

Ah, yes, I see the error there. They already tried that didn’t they?