Brown's 42-day detention plan is crushed in House of Lords vote

Published Date: 13 October 2008 Gordon Brown tonight suffered a crushing 191 vote defeat over his plan to extend from 28 days to 42 the limit for pre-charge detention of terror suspects. Peers overwhelmingly rejected the highly controversial move by 309 votes to 118 after an impassioned debate. The Prime Minister will now have to decide whether to press ahead with the proposal, amid growing speculation that it may be dropped. Tony Blair suffered his first Commons defeat over a bid to extend detention to 90 days in 2005. Parliament agreed instead to a 28 day limit. Mr Brown's attempt to extend that to 42 days scraped through the Commons by just nine votes in June, despite a rebellion by 36 Labour MPs. The Government had to rely then on the votes of Democratic Unionists. The huge scale of tonight's Lords defeat will make Home... [read full story]