1) Detention without charge is not the same thing as detention without trial. Neither is detention pending charge the same thing as detention pending trial. There is a perfectly good tradition of arguing that everyone should be granted bail pending trial. It is not a position I agree with. I am perfectly content with the idea that someone potentially very dangerous should be incarcerated pending trial, provided that the period before trial is not lengthened unnecessarily. This is a completely different matter from imprisoning someone against whom one has so little evidence that one cannot even bring a charge.
2) Detention without charge is not the same thing as detention in advance of charge. My guess is that most of the public think the situation under debate is one in which the police have lots of evidence against someone and know that they are going to charge him, but don't want to discuss their evidence with him yet in case he warns other members of his cell (say) who might then react by setting off a bomb or some other such outrage. But that is not remotely the situation here. The situation here is one in which the police want to hold people against whom they have very little evidence - so little, in fact, that in half the cases that have reached nearly 28 days, the people held turned out to be completely innocent (whilst in the other cases, as we know, it would have been possible to charge much earlier). I'll say that again in case you didn't get it. Half the time people held for these long periods have turned out to be completely innocent. At some level, of course, it is slightly surprising that the figure is as low as half being innocent - after all, by definition these are people against whom there is very little real evidence.
Because of the above two points, I think that it is very important that we get our terms right. We must not say that we are opposing detention without trial or pre-charge detention for 42 days, because what is under discussion is neither of these things. We are opposed to to detaining people for weeks on end when we lack even sufficient evidence to charge them with anything specific and without telling them what they are supposed to have done so that they have a chance to rebut, in a situation in which half of those kept even close to the present limit turn out to be completely innocent.
PS. On This Week last night, whilst announcing his likely candidacy in the David Davis by-election, Kelvin MacKenzie stated that he thought 420 days was not too long to hold a terrorist. And by and large he's right. But the set of people being held for long periods is not "terrorists"; it is not even "people accused of being terrorists"; it is just "people suspected of being terrorists". Now, people are suspected of all kinds of things. Dick Cheney is suspected of being a war criminal; Prince Philip is suspected of having organised the murder of Diana; chief executives of pharmaceuticals companies are suspected of organising medical experiments without consent on poor people in developing countries. And the thing about most suspicions that are reached without proper evidence or reasoning is that they are wrong. It isn't enough, just to detain people for six weeks, that one has a suspicion-without-evidence against him. If you have evidence, lay a charge. If you have none, then he should be presumed innocent and released until you do have some evidence against him.
