Follow yesterday's Commons debate - as it happened
The counter-terrorism bill faces its second reading debate in the Commons today, with many Labour MPs unhappy over proposals to extend the time suspects can be held without charge from 28 to 42 days.
Gordon Brown defended the proposals at his press conference earlier today.
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4.35pm
The debate is starting now. Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, is proposing that the counter-terrorism bill receives a second reading.
None of the opposition parties have tabled an amendment to the main motion, which means that - unless something extraordinary happens - there will not be a vote when the debate finishes at 10pm.
But this is the first time the Commons has debated the bill and that debate will give some indication as to the scale of the opposition to the proposal to allow terrorist suspects to be held for up to 42 days without charge.
Smith starts by trying to explain the reasons for the bill.
The first intervention comes from Simon Burns (Con, Chelmsford West), who questions the need for the government's proposed measure.
But the second comes from Bob Spink, the independent MP recently expelled from the Conservative parliamentary party, who says his constituents will support anything that makes them safe.
4.40pm
As the threat from terrorism evolves, so the law must adapt, Smith says.
Another Conservative intervenes. He says that, since the bill would allow suspects to be questioned by the police after having been charged, why is it necessary for the law to be changed to allow them to be detained for 42 days?
Smith says there could be occasions when both powers could be necessary.
4.45pm
Smith is taking quite a few interventions at the moment, and has not really got into her stride.
Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) asks Smith about the director of public prosecutions, who is not in favour of 42 days. Smith says the power is necessary to deal with future scenarios.
4.50pm
Indicating that she wants to make progress, Smith outlines some of the other points in the bill.
It will allow post-charge questioning, provide for tougher sentences for terrorism offences and require convicted terrorists to provide the police with personal information when released.
Rob Marris (Lab, Wolverhampton South West), who voted in favour of suspects being detained for 90 days when parliament debated this in 2005, the occasion when Tony Blair suffered his first defeat, intervenes.
He says he is worried Smith is giving away too much away to her opponents. "There's a balance to be struck, and my side of the pendulum does not get as much airtime."
Chris Mullin, the Labour former minister and a leftwinger, asks again about the DPP, Sir Ken McDonald.
Smith claims that McDonald has not said that he does not want the power, and she points out he's a public servant.
4.55pm
The interventions are getting more aggressive. David Winnick, the independent-minded Labour backbencher, sounds quite irate and Michael Howard, the former Tory leader, throws one of Smith's own quotes at her.
He says that last year, when asked how long the detention period should be extended by, she replied: "I don't know."
Howard wants to know when she changed her mind.
Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, takes her back to Ken McDonald. He recites a McDonald quotation in which he said he was happy with the status quo.
5.05pm
Smith takes another intervention, from Frank Field, the maverick former Labour minister.
She appears to be getting bogged down now, taking intervention after intervention, but Field's comments are helpful.
He says he detects a division between MPs who want to "remain passive" and those who believe "there may be some time when we will need these extra powers".
Smith explains why laws should be different relating to terrorism.
First, the "severe consequences" of a terrorist attack mean that prevention is particularly important.
And, second, the amount of material that needs to be investigated by the police is often more than in other investigations.
Asked why the Spanish were able to charge all the suspects in the Madrid bombing within five days, Smith says comparisons with other systems do not always work.
She says that Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said this could be like comparing "apples with goats".
5.10pm
She says that in France, under the investigating magistrate system, suspects in terrorism cases have been held while investigations have been ongoing for up to four years.
Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney general, says Smith should not be comparing common-law systems with other legal systems and that no other country with a common-law legal system has 28-day pre-charge detention.
He also says that "safeguards for the individual" are greater under common-law systems.
Smith quotes some of those in favour of the government's proposals: Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, the Commons home affairs committee and senior police officers.
5.20pm
In a tetchy exchange, Grieve says that while some senior police officers are in favour, others are against. Smith challenges him to name any, but he does not rise to respond.
Smith now gets diverted into a discussion of the Conservative party position.
She suggests that the Tories have conceded that there might be a case for holding suspects for more than 28 days.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, rises to make his position clear: "There is not one shred of evidence for extension beyond 28 days. Full stop."
But Davis says if ministers conjure up "nightmare" scenarios, then the Tories have to say what they would do.
That is why he has floated the idea of using the powers in the Civil Contingencies Act to deal with the extreme situations, which Davis says he thinks are extremely unlikely.
Smith says this answer shows the Tories have accepted there might be a need for going beyond 28 days.
5.25pm
(The Civil Contingencies Act allows the government wide powers in a national emergency. The Tories believe that this could give the police the powers they needed in an extreme situation.)
Smith is winding up now. She stresses that she is trying to achieve a consensus.
5.30pm
The final intervention comes from Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem, Orkney and Shetland), who asks if the lord advocate in Scotland (the Scottish law officer) supports the measures.
Smith says discussions are continuing (which seems to be a "no").
Finally Smith says the measures are "precautionary, proportionate and necessary".
She goes on: "It is my sincere hope that we never need these powers."
But she would "rather have necessary powers on the statute book there for us if we need them".
And that's it. Smith's ordeal is over. Whereas a home secretary such as Charles Clarke or John Reid might have tried to bludgeon the house with aggressive argument, or alarm MPs with vivid scaremongering, Smith's approach has been to appeal for consensus.
She managed to maintain her good humour through most of her speech, although it would be very surprising if she had managed to change any minds.
David Davis rises for the Tories. He starts by citing Benjamin Franklin's quote to the effect that those who place security above freedom deserve neither.
Davis says that the UK already has "the longest period of detention without charge in the free world by far".
The longest in a common-law jurisdiction is 12 days in Australia.
In the US, even after 9/11, an American citizen can only be held for two days before charge.
5.45pm
The government's proposal would put the UK in a worse position than China, where suspects can only be held for 37 days.
Smith asked the Tories to name senior police officers who disagree with the proposal.
Davis says there are plenty of police officers in this category, but he does not want to name them publicly because of what he says is the government's track record of dealing with public servants who disagree with them.
Davis says he has spoken to police officers and they have told him that they have coped perfectly well with every terrorist investigation without needing more than 28 days.
When a Tory frontbencher is speaking in a debate like this, Labour backbenchers often try to trip them up with tricky interventions. But Davis is getting a relatively easy run.
Quentin Davies, the ex-Tory who defected to Labour, and Frank Field have had a go, but they have not thrown him off his stride.
5.55pm
Davis says the government has not shown the the extension of pre-charge detention is necessary.
He says the police already have powers that they could use, such as control orders - which could be used to monitor suspects - or post-charge questioning, a provision in the bill that the Tories support.
He also says he is in favour of allowing the use of intercept evidence in court.
Davis then moves on to what would happen in an extreme situation, such as the "five Heathrow plots" scenario floated by a former home secretary (I think he's referring to John Reid), or the three-9/11-plots-on-one-day scenario floated by the policing minister, Tony McNulty.
Davis casts doubt on the probability of these scenarios.
Labour's Rob Marris says that there were three separate attacks on 9/11.
It's a good intervention, but Davis responds by saying that the Americans have still only got 48 hours' pre-charge detention.
6pm
Davis says the Civil Contingencies Act allows for pre-charge detention of 58 days in a national emergency.
"We are saying if you believe these things are going to happen, you have already got the power," he says.
Under the act, a decision to detain someone could be overruled by judicial review. And MPs would have to approve an order within seven days.
Bob Marshall-Andrews, the Labour leftwing barrister, says that if the government is worried about suspects not helping with the decryptions of computer codes, the law already gives the police the power to detain people who are not cooperating in cases of this kind.
Davis then moves on to the possible negative consequences of the government's proposal. He says it could fuel extremism.
6.05pm
If the police were to have the power proposed by the government, the risk of a miscarriage of justice would be magnified, "with devastating consequences", Davis says.
He ends his speech with a flourish.
"Injustice and oppression are not always meted out by hard-faced men in jackboots. They can be the result of bureaucracies operating under pressure," he says.
"We won't sacrifice our fundamental freedoms without the most compelling justification. That would do the terrorists' job for them.
"This country does not buckle or bend or bow to terrorism."
Davis is a heavyweight figure in the Commons, who has already engineered the departure of at least two home secretaries, and at this stage in the debate he appears to have the better of Smith.
Mark Durkan, from Northern Ireland's SDLP, is the next speaker.
He says that when Mo Mowlam was Northern Ireland secretary, she told him how hard it was for a politician to refuse a direct request from the police on a security issue.
He is suggesting that, although the bill says detention before charge for 42 days would have be approved by the home secretary, in practice the home secretary would not be in a position to say no.
6.20pm
Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, says his party supports some aspects of the bill - such as the provision for post-charge questioning - but that the "ugly" points in the bill outnumber the welcome points.
Pre-charge detention for 42 days would be a "serious erosion of our hard-won freedoms", he says.
It would also be counterproductive, because effective policing requires intelligence and convictions depend upon evidence and witnesses.
This help would not be forthcoming if people felt the state was using disproportionate powers.
Huhne also highlights one aspect of the bill that has received relatively little attention - the power allowing a home secretary to order an inquest to take place without a jury when this is in the interests of national security.
Huhne says that coroners' courts are a "fundamental bulwark against abuse by the state".
Knowing that the cause of a death would be independently established by a coroner's court gave citizens an important protection against the abuse of state power.
Bill Cash (Con, Stone) asks why the Lib Dems are now in favour of pre-charge detention for 28 days when they were previously opposed to this.
Huhne says he thinks 28 days is now justified, but he thinks the matter should be kept under review.
He highlights some examples of miscarriages of justice. And then he proceeds to ridicule the government's suggestion that 42 days in necessary to allow the police to sift through complex computer evidence.
6.35pm
In one case cited by the government the information on a suspect's computer was equivalent to one third the size of the US Library of Congress.
Huhne says giving the police an extra two weeks - the difference between 28 days and 42 days - to deal with all this would be "entirely useless" because you would need 238,000 police officers, working eight-hour shifts, to read all the material.
"That's all the police officers in this country, plus another 100,000 police officers from a friendly neighbour."
6.45pm
Huhne concludes by appealing to Smith to join the growing consensus against 42 days.
The house is pretty empty now. Keith Vaz, the Labour former minister who chairs the home affairs committee, is the first backbencher to speak on the government side.
He says that, in a report last year, his committee said that the police and the government had not managed to persuade it that the current 28-day limit was inadequate.
But in a report in 2006, under a different chairman, the committee said that in the future the 28-day limit might prove inadequate.
7pm
Vaz says he accepts the need for the home secretary to have reserve powers to extend the period of pre-charge detention "in very exceptional circumstances".
But he urges Smith to change the provision saying the Commons would have to review an order extending detention beyond 28 days within 30 days of the order being issued. Thirty days is "too long", says Vaz.
Smith has already indicated that she might change this. Some MPs are pressing for 10 days.
Douglas Hogg, the Conservative former minister, is called to speak.
There is a time limit on backbench speeches and he says he wants to pick up on some relatively obscure aspects of the bill.
He picks up on Huhne's point about coroners' courts, which he finds disturbing.
What would happen if an American "extraordinary rendition" flight landed in the UK with the body of a dead terrorist suspect on board, he wonders.
7.10pm
Hogg also claims there is a clause in the bill - clause 69 - that could censor investigative journalism.
It creates an offence of soliciting information that could be of assistance to terrorists and Hogg says it could be used to prosecute journalists for publishing information about airport security.
And there's no public interest defence, Hogg points out.
Hogg also picks up a point made earlier by the Labour leftwinger Diane Abbott in an intervention.
She said the parliamentary scrutiny proposed in the bill - ie the Commons voting to approve an order from the home secretary extending the detention period beyond 28 days - would not be effective because it would be a whipped vote, following a short debate, based on scanty information.
John Heppell (Lab, Nottingham East) is up next. He supports the bill.
7.15pm
George Galloway, the Respect MP, comes up next. He says the debate is "such a rout" for the government that he's almost embarrassed to join in.
"We've had a brilliant, bristling defence of liberty from the Tory frontbench," he says.
In a classic, turbo-charged display of eloquent Galloway ranting, he says the bill would be counterproductive.
7.30pm
"The home secretary is just wrong when she describes the threat Britain is facing as being on a scale unprecedented," he says.
"The IRA campaign in Britain was far more deadly than the campaign of Islamist extremism. The prime minister came within an inch of her life in a hotel in Brighton [because of IRA terrorism]."
The IRA used to set off "bombs everywhere", he says. "But we never sacrificed, at least on this side of the water, our essential liberties."
Galloway claims that he probably knows more about the views of Muslims than any other MP.
As a candidate in the London assembly elections, he has been to three major Muslim events in the last week.
"I ask you to believe this. Young Muslims in Britain are feeling besieged, feeling unfairly put upon."
And it is not radical imams who are to blame for radicalising young Muslims, he says. "All they have to do to be radicalised if they are young Muslims is to switch on the television news."
Frank Dobson, the former health secretary, follows Galloway.
He concentrates his entire speech on the 42-day issue and, like Galloway, he claims that the government's proposal would be unnecessary and counterproductive.
7.40pm
Paul Goodman, the Conservative MP for Wycombe, points out that one of his constituents was held for 28 days before being released without charge. "It is no small matter, whatever a man's character or past, for a man to be held without charge for a month," he says.
Goodman also asks whether the government is pushing its plans for political reasons.
He says a government spin doctor was quoted in a newspaper today saying that Labour could benefit from the perception that the Conservative party had outsourced its security policy to Liberty.
If true, this shows that ministers are prepared to risk the position of the mainstream leadership of Britain's ethnic minorities "for a quick political win", Goodman says.
7.50pm
Dari Taylor (Lab, Stockton South) defends the proposals in the bill allowing parliament to scrutinise a decision by a home secretary to order an extension of pre-charge detention.
A Tory MP asks if this would really happen during recess, but Taylor says she thinks the Commons would return to deal with a case of this kind.
7.55pm
The debate is still carrying on, but I'm afraid we're bowing out now.
It hasn't been one of the great parliamentary debates, but I think it has showed that the ministers are making virtually no headway in terms of winning over potential rebels.
And Smith will find it hard to go back to the Home Office and claim, in all honesty, that she has won the argument.
David Davis was impressive, although he probably won't thank George Galloway for being the MP who praised him most lavishly.
But, from the government's point of view, at least Smith doesn't seem to have made her position worse.
Rather than adopting a belligerent approach, which might have antagonised her opponents, she was mostly good-tempered and she kept stressing consensus.
She did not try offering concessions - apart from a well-trailed hint that she would consider reducing the 30-day period MPs would have to wait before voting on an order to extend pre-charge detention.
There will be plenty of time for that later.
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