While the door to the Home Secretary’s office has revolved ever more rapidly since 2001 the authoritarian brief of its occupants has hardly wavered.

Somewhere in the panic of 9/11 the western world lost all sense of perspective in the homeland security department. Suddenly it was easy to pitch authoritarian pet projects to scared and brow-beaten politicians: the thin end of the wedge had gained traction at last. Since then a steady stream of sledgehammer-wielding civil-serveants, authorities, special-interest groups and snake-oil salespeople have been queueing at the Home Secretary’s door, eager to take a swing at our liberties for their own convenience or profit.

Now UK law permits, amongst other repressive measures, internment, house arrest, limits on the right to protest and keeping files on the innocent. East Germany eat your heart out.

An injection of balance, common sense and proportionality is urgently required at the Home Office. Sadly I suspect it will take more than a new mascot to restore our lost freedoms and the right to a private life in Britain.

I am writing to ask you to vote against the government’s plans to extend from 28 to 42 days the period for which suspects can be interned in the UK.

I am not afraid of terrorism and I don’t want my representatives to be afraid on my behalf. I understand that it is not possible to stop all terrorist acts. I consider the risk to be acceptable because terrorism is incredibly rare: you are more likely to be killed by your own trousers than in an act of random political violence!

Please lobby the government to adopt a security strategy that preserves liberty rather than sacrificing it. Here are two suggestions:

• Invest in the intelligence services. The alleged “liquid bomb” plot was foiled not by imprisoning people without charge or through an Orwellian database system, but by effective, co-ordinated intelligence work over many months. We need more of this. Intelligence works without having to know in advance what the next plot might be and, with proper judicial oversight, it enables us to attack the risk of terrorism in a proportionate way without sacrificing liberty.

• Invest in emergency response. Our emergency services have an excellent track record managing all kinds of incidents, from flooding to suicide bombings. Emergency response is valuable whatever the threat. It is an efficient and effective way to spend money on security that has negligible effect on liberty.

Over the coming days you will be asked by the whips whether the human rights of terrorist suspects are really more important than the stability of the Labour government. You should discard this argument: the success of the government has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Governments come and go, but our fundamental human rights must endure. As a principled and long-serving member of parliament I know you understand this important point.

Please therefore vote against any measures that would extend powers of detention without charge.

Thank you.

If you haven’t yet, there’s still time (go here for information on what to do). Please don’t copy and paste my letter though. It is CC licensed like all the content on this blog, but spamming MPs with multiple copies of the same letter reduces the effectiveness of a campaign. Putting your own thoughts into words doesn’t take long and will make a difference.

In the UK you can already be detained without charge or trial for 28 days if you are accused of terrorism, acts preparatory to terrorism, possessing material for a terrorist purpose, being a member of a terrorist organisation, funding terrorism, attending a terror training camp, inciting terrorism, and more besides. This is one of the longest periods allowed in a democratic country Update: the BBC article gets this all wrong. Here’s a much better analysis from Liberty [pdf]. Hat tip: UK Liberty. If the period expires before you are charged, you must be released from prison but will probably be placed under house arrest instead.

Now the Government wants to extend the pre-charge detention period to six weeks, citing public support and widespread fear about possible future terrorist plots (which they have been actively fomenting):

Today in Britain there are at least 2,000 terrorist suspects, 200 networks or cells and 30 active plots. The aim of terrorists is to kill and maim the maximum number of victims, indiscriminately and without warning, including through suicide attacks.

I am not afraid of terrorism and I don’t want my representatives to be afraid on my behalf. I accept that it is not possible to stop all terrorist acts. The risk is acceptable because terrorism is extremely rare.

So far this century 52 people in the UK have been murdered by criminals using terrorist tactics. Over the same period (extrapolating from figures reported in 2000) more than a million people have died from cancer; heart disease has finished off 880,000 of us; and 28,000 UK citizens were killed on the roads. It is rumoured that you are more likely to be killed by your own trousers than a terrorist bomb!

I have several objections of principal to the six-week internment proposal (and actually they apply to 28 days too):

• The Government hasn’t produced any evidence to show the measures are necessary, preferring instead to quote movie-plot threats about multiple, simultaneous attacks while ignoring the fact that we already have legislation to handle such situations – the Civil Contingencies Act. Sensible alternative suggestions from non-partisan sources have been rejected without satisfactory explanation.

• Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available. The longer the police have to investigate someone, the longer they will take. The existing powers have already been abused in this manner – a researcher at the University of Nottingham was detained without charge for six days over a matter that would surely have been satisfactorily resolved in 48 hours prior to the limit being extended.

• The longer the police investigate someone for, the more likely they are to find something with which to charge them, regardless of whether the investigation itself was legitimate or justified. “Give me six lines written by the most honourable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him” — Cardinal Richelieu.

• Terrorism is fantastically rare, so the vast majority of people interred under these powers will be innocent. Just 3.5% of people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 have been convicted of terrorism.

• The longer someone is imprisoned, the bigger the impact on their lives. This applies even if no charges are brought. Think for a minute whether you’d still have a job, a spouse or a home if you’d spent the last six weeks in prison without ever getting your day in court or the chance to clear your name. There’s no smoke without fire, after all…

• People are playing politics with the issue. If the Government loses a vote in Parliament on the matter it will be widely interpreted as evidence of the Prime Minister’s weakness and incompetence – with knock-on implications for the Labour party’s chances of survival in power. Not an atmosphere that encourages rational debate and principled decision making! The Government has also been trying to horse-trade, offering DUP members of parliament concessions in return for their support. How is it that we’ve arrived at a situation where our fundamental liberties can be horse-traded?

Suspects against whom there is evidence of wrongdoing should be put on trial. Where there is no such evidence they should be released. We should stop dreaming up protection measures against movie plot threats and start investing in intelligence (which works regardless of the threats that might exist) and emergency response (which helps regardless of what type of incident occurs).

If you feel strongly on this issue, and you’re a British citizen, please take a few moments to write to your MP. You can do so online via TheyWorkForYou.com – just put in your postcode and you’ll be taken to a page where you can compose your message. If you need advice on what to say there’s a good guide on how to write an effective letter here.

Tell your MP you’re not afraid of terrorism and ask them to vote on your behalf against the extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days when the counter-terrorism bill comes before the Commons this week.

As with the existing system, the new (slightly simplified) threat levels will have specific meanings for various official and industrial organisations. Government, the security services, the armed forces and other elements of our critical national infrastructure will all have defined actions to take when warnings are issued, and will instructed on how to act when the threat is at a given level.

The difference with this new system is that the public have been made a part of it. Strangely, however, no guidance has been issued on how you should react to the different levels of threat.

When the measures were announced, a government official appeared on Radio Four’s P.M. programme to advise that (paraphrasing) “the public should be especially vigilent at all threat levels. The higher the level, the more vigilent they should be. However if the level is reduced, they should be no less vigilent”.

Got that? Good.

Claiming all this is a good idea, David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary) said that the new system will, “increase both public confidence and public vigilence.” However it seems more likely that the increases will be in public fear and public speculation. It is distinctly less clear how publicising the threat level will help to combat terror, especially if you don’t know what to do in response.

Using fear to exercise control is a well known and well used strategy. From the Inquisition to the cold war to modern-day terrorism, those in power have used fear to sell their policies. In this case, the government seems to believe you are safer when worrying about unexplained changes to unspecified threats than when debating and challenging their home affairs agenda, from which this system seems designed to distract. You are encouraged to consider what the threat might be, and then to fear it, rather than to challenge the government’s interpretation of, and reaction to, the supposed terror threat.

Given that terrorism is so fantastically rare, even in the prevailing state of international politics, we should all be suspicious of Government claims about unspecified threats.

In matters of security, everone has an agenda.