42-day detention plan 'still illegal'

London: Gordon Brown's latest plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge would still be unlawful, MPs and peers warned on Thursday.

The all-party joint committee on human rights said concessions put forward by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith were insufficient to persuade it to back the new anti-terror laws. The proposals would be in breach of the right to liberty in Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it added.

Ministers were urged to scrap the proposals and instead set out details of how they would opt out of human rights obligations in the case of a terror threat to the UK. Committee chairman Andrew Dismore claimed that the Prime Minister could be defeated in the vote.