http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050307/wl_uk_afp/britainattackspolitics&e=1&ncid=

LONDON (AFP) - British government proposals to fight terrorism suffered a blow when the upper house of parliament voted to allow judges, not a cabinet minister, to impose restrictions including electronic tagging and curfews on suspects.


The unelected House of Lords voted by 249 to 119 in support of the opposition Liberal Democrat amendment, which came during the detailed committee stage of debate on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill.


The decision modifies the Labour government's initial anti-terrorism legislation, which gave the home secretary the right to authorize "control orders" ranging from tagging, curfews and bans on phone and Internet use to full house arrest.


Home Secretary Charles Clarke has already conceded judicial involvement for house arrest orders in an attempt to achieve consensus in the House of Commons.


But parliamentary opposition to the bill remains strong, as even members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government have demanded that judges be allowed to rule on other control orders as well.


The Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed only narrowly by the House of Commons last week in a 272-219 vote amid a revolt among backbench Labour lawmakers...

Well done Lords, this is one of the few times I have had something good to say about that particular group of people. Yes a judge should be involved unless they want a disaster which is open to abuse like the US Patriot Act.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. Their elected representatives seem to take protecting citizen rights more seriously than ours do.

For now at least.

Honestly if this legislation hadn't been so worrying it would be funny. Tony blair forever banging on about the 'rule of law', and then his govt tries to get rid of it when it suits them.

Rare indeed is the day I applaud the house of lords, but on this occasion they have done their job and done it well.

Mark

That is the reason we have a second house.

My only hope is that there is not some kind of attack and they yell I told you so.

Interesting how they intend to treat Muslim terrorists different to Irish and other home grown nutters.

Eamonn McCann wrote this on the subject:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/columnists/eamonn_mccann/story.jsp?story=618622

"What a fuddy-duddy Hugh Orde is. The Chief Constable was on radio yesterday explaining that it's not enough for the police to know who carried out a crime, even a particularly horrendous crime: the PSNI can't move without evidence to put before a court. "Due process" must be observed.

As he spoke, New Labour whips were fanning out across Westminster strong-arming MPs to support a Bill which dispenses with the entire notion of due process.

Under the new Terror Bill, if a Government Minister says you did it, you did it. Not that you will have any right to know what it is that you allegedly did.

A more solid Westminster consensus has assembled behind this proposition that has been apparent from some media reports.

The debate in the Lords on Tuesday which forced Home Secretary Charles Clarke to back off from some clauses didn't centre on any issue of principle.

What Tories, Lib-Dems and a handful of Labour peers demanded was that the measure should be subject to periodic review and judges required at some point to - as Gareth Peirce put it - "give (the) procedure a spurious cover."

No amendment was proposed, much less passed, to bring the Bill into line with what Orde says are the minimum due process requirements of the PSNI.

Any day now, New Labour will denounce the PSNI as a bleeding-heart liberal outfit and a danger to national security.

Then there was US envoy Mitchell Reiss popping up immediately after Orde's radio stint to express his disappointment with the performance of Gerry Adams at the Sinn Fein ard fheis.

Adams had told delegates that no republican should be involved in criminality but added that he wouldn't have republicans criminalised for actions which might be against the law but which had been undertaken in pursuit of legitimate political objectives.

Reiss represents an administration which for more than four years now (that is, since before September 11 2001) has been conducting "executive renditions" of people who might - or, then again, might not - be involved in illegal activity.

Rendition involves seizing people in countries around the world and secretly and by force transporting them across national frontiers.

No charge, no trial, no extradition, no legal proceedings of any sort whatsoever.

Outlets as non-revolutionary as Newsnight, Vanity Fair and the New York Times have reported that some of those subjected to "rendering" have been tortured: indeed, that the purpose of the exercise was precisely to deliver those seized to countries where torture is commonplace and due process unknown.

And yet Reiss feels entitled to give Adams a lecture about the need to observe and respect law.

And hardly anybody feels it appropriate to draw attention to the contradiction.

Law? Ask Tony Blair if the invasion of Iraq was within the law. Or rather, don't. No point.

...

The defence offered by Blair for this omission has to do with lines drawn in the blood-soaked sand and the observation that since everything was done in pursuit of a legitimate political objective, the toppling of the Saddam dictatorship, the concept of criminality doesn't arise.

There has been a great deal of hypocrisy on display in recent days and by no means all of it can be put down to Sinn Fein and the IRA.