Gordon Brown won a hollow victory for his new 42-day anti-terrorism
powers last night when he was forced to rely on the votes of nine
Democratic Unionist Party MPs during a day of backroom deals and
concessions.
Although
plans to detain suspected terrorists for up to 42 days were approved by
315 votes to 306, Labour MPs described the outcome as "the worst of all
worlds" and said Mr Brown's decision to stake his reputation on the
vote had backfired badly.
A bad day for Mr Brown got even worse
when it emerged that highly-classified documents about the scale of the
threat from al-Qa'ida were left on a train by a Whitehall official. It
was the most serious in an embarrassing spate of sensitive data losses
which have bedevilled the Brown Government.
Amid renewed doubts
among his own MPs about whether Mr Brown should lead his party into the
general election, ministers privately expressed fears that the 42-day
detention plan could yet be defeated in Parliament.
The House
of Lords looks certain to throw out the proposal overwhelmingly and
ministers fear the narrowness of last night's vote will embolden more
Labour rebels to vote against the Counter-Terrorism Bill should it
return to the Commons. Thirty-six Labour MPs opposed it last night but
organisers claim another 25 have grave reservations.
Downing Street insisted there had been no backstairs deal with the
DUP. But rumours swept Westminster that the party which normally votes
with the Tories had been bought off by promises of £100m of
infrastucture projects in Northern Ireland and that the province would
keep revenues from water charges rather than hand them over to the
Treasury.
Labour critics of Mr Brown said his handling of the
Bill had raised further doubts about his future as Prime Minister – and
that an attempt to look tough on security had been neutered by the
concessions he made in order to win over Labour rebels. One former
minister said: "This was a crisis of Gordon's own making. He wanted to
show strength but ended up showing profound weakness." Independent continues
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