FactCheck: 42-day detention support?

FactCheck gets to grips with the claims at today's Prime Minister's Questions.

The analysis

David Cameron's asking the PM whether he would like to retract the government's plans to increase detention without charge for terror suspects from the current 28-day limit to 42 days.

No, says Brown: the proposals will go before parliament, and he goes on to claim that he has in-principle support for extended questioning not just from the opposition, but also from leading civil liberties campaigners, Liberty.

"That's just false," said a Liberty spokesperson. "We don't think there's any case to go beyond 28 days. This is something the government keeps pulling up and it's a bit naughty."

So what's the story? When plans to extend the detention of terror subjects were mooted, Liberty looked at whether there were already laws in place to deal with a worst-case terror scenario: if, say, three 9/11s took place on the same day, and so could be multiple arrests and suspects to question.

It found that the Civil Contingencies Act, passed in 2003, gives the government the powers to detain suspects for more than 28 days in exceptional circumstances.

So Liberty argues, not that we need more than 28 days to interview witnesses, but if, in exceptional circumstances, we did, there is already legislation to deal with it. A rather different impression than that given by the PM today.

Source
Liberty

The analysis

A leaked list from the Labour whip's office - obtained by The Sunday Times - contains the comments quoted by Cameron today. The document is an alphabetical list of MPs, their voting intentions on the 42-day bill, and, embarrassingly for Labour, a column for "whip's comments".

According to this last column, Andy Slaughter, MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush, "will support but thinks barmy", Joan Ruddock "feels case not proved 42 days plucked from thin air" and Bill Etherington is "against even 28 days - could be persuaded to stay away".

Sources
The Sunday Times, Blacklist of MPs in terror bill rebellion, April 20, 2008
Whips list

The analysis

The government may be on the road - but it's only three fifths of the way along, according to the most recent figures.

These showed that in 2005-06 there were either 2.8 million, or 3.8 million children living below the poverty line (depending on whether housing costs were taken into account). In 1996-97, the numbers were 3.4 million and 4.2 million respectively.

So a drop of 600,000 in either case - laudable, but not exactly a million. And these figures were the first in six years to see a rise - of 100,000 before housing costs and 200,000 after.

Release of this year's poverty figures has been delayed until June - too soon yet to say how much further they will take Labour towards or away from its big box office target of halving child poverty by 2010, but something experts say is unlikely based on the most recent data.

Source
House Below Average Income 2005-06 Chapter 5 (p53)
Institute for Fiscal Studies - Poverty rises for the first time since 1997

The analysis

Hmm. It's actually down 13 per cent since 2000 - from 1,011,684 offences to 876,298 offences in 2007 - according to Met Police stats, which cover 99 per cent of London.

But it's worth being cautious about reading too much into recorded crime statistics. These figures measure the crimes reported to police, so are therefore affected by changes in the likes of how crimes are counted, and how willing people are to report them to the police.

According to the well-respected British Crime Survey, which asks a sample of people about their experiences of crime, crime in the capital has in fact stayed pretty constant.

Our full-length FactCheck into Ken Livingstone's crime-cutting claims - which were disputed by his rivals - delves into the thorny stats in more detail.

Source
FactCheck: less crime in London?
Metropolitan Police crime statistics 2007

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