The government’s plans to extend the time we allow police to hold terror suspects without charge is something I am not persuaded with; lawyers have also condemned the new legislation, arguing that several of its provisions breach the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law. I have been concerned for a long time in relation to the proposed changes in legislation as I believe that this simply diminishes all our human rights and does nothing to fight the "war on terror” there are other complex issues at stake here — civil liberties, legal precedent, political advantage, and so forth. The Muslim community knows perfectly well how important it is to tackle terrorism, because terrorist acts affects them just as much as all of us. In addition; we make it clear Terrorists are criminals and as such the present legislation is sufficient to address this sort of criminality, it is clear that there are serious human rights concerns with the legislation, that can be open to abuse in its application and that it does not carry the safeguards that one would like to see. I would publicly support the views expressed by the Secretary General of Amnesty International Irene Khan who has stated: "Tearing up rights and freedoms that date back to Magna Carta will only hand a victory to the criminals who carry out atrocities like those of 7 July. Effective counter-terrorism measures are essential, but the sweeping and vague provisions of the bill are dangerous and ill-conceived....The package of measures put forward by the government represents the deliberate attrition of human rights. The government’s broad and vaguely worded definition of terrorism could be used to prosecute even peaceful anti-nuclear campaigners, and leaves scope for political bias when deciding to prosecute." I believe that Justice demands a proper and a measured response. Our legislation should try to build trust and confidence. We all want increased security but we cannot forfeit important civil liberties that we as British have taken so long to establish, what we have to make certain is that evidence is gathered in a proper way and that there is an appropriate system of law to protect the citizen, we need to concentrate on improving and reforming the intelligence services and continue assisting the police on the ground if we are to win this threat. A respect of human rights is essential if we are to have proper and effective counter-terror legislation. We must all have confidence in what we put in place - that way we can make it work. The UK already has the longest period of pre-charge detention in the western world. Pre-charge detentions remain as short as 48 hours in the US, five days in Spain and seven and a half days in Turkey. There is no evidence that further extension of the 28 days detention in the UK would make us any safer. I believe there are better ways of dealing with the Government’s argument, like having powers to re-question suspects after they are charged with judicial oversight. It is clear that if these proposals if allowed to go ahead will have a disproportionate impact on one sector of our community. Suleman Nagdi MBE