The government’s proposed bill to extend the time police can hold terror suspects without charge from 28 to 42 days, was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords, by 309 votes to 118.

This is a major setback for Prime Minister Gordon Brown with many labour peers voting against the bill, after the labour government had only managed to get the bill through the Commons by 9 votes. Even so, Brown has insisted that he will press ahead with the legislation, using the Parliament Act to force the bill through, after the necessary delay of one year, if needed.

The amendment to the bill was put forward by the former West Midlands chief constable, Lord Dear, who said that, “This attempt to appear tough on terrorism is a shabby charade unworthy of a democrat”. While Lady Neville-Jones, the shadow security minister, criticized the bill as, “unnecessary, undesirable and unworkable”.

The government did manage to persuade some in the Lords to favour 42 day detention; most notably Lord Carlisle, an independent reviewer of anti-terror legislation, who claimed that it would only affect five or six people over the next four years. But surely, this encroachment in to the liberty of a small number of the population could be the stepping stone to a greater attack on our civil liberties.

Opposition to the proposed bill was widespread, even among counter terrorism officials. Two former heads of MI5, Stella Remington and Eliza Mannigham, condemned the bill as “wrong in principle, unneeded in practice and a move that would alienate the Muslim community”. Even the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, described the law as “pernicious” and “counter productive”.

Benjamin Ward, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, warns that ‘the problems with this bill don’t begin and end with 42 days’. A further provision in the 2008 Bill would broaden the definition of ‘terrorism’ and effectively cover any ‘acts or threats designed to advance a ‘racial’ cause’. This means a wider section of the public are vulnerable to committing criminal offences which in fact may not adversely harm anyone.

Certainly, the hard fought and hard won principles of habeas corpus, dating as far back as the Magna Carta, and entrenched in the Human Rights Act, should not be lightly undermined.