Anti-Terror Bill Passes In Britain

LONDON, June 11 -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown won passage of a key piece of anti-terrorism legislation in Parliament on Wednesday, but analysts said the victory was too narrow to revive Brown's sagging public approval figures.

Brown's controversial proposal to allow police to hold terrorism suspects for up to 42 days without charge, up from the current 28-day limit, was approved by the House of Commons on a vote of 315 to 306.

Passage of the bill, one of Brown's most important challenges since he took office just under a year ago, was imperiled by 36 members of his ruling Labor Party who sided against him. It scraped by only on the strength of nine votes from the Democratic Unionist Party, a Northern Ireland party that is rarely a decisive factor in the halls of Westminster, home of Britain's Parliament.

To take effect, the measure must also be approved by the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament. But analysts and legislators said the Lords will almost certainly reject it and send it back to the Commons -- dooming Brown to more months of political wrangling.

"If this was meant to be a relaunch, he's still sitting on the trampoline," said John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. In his view, the slim victory was unlikely to change Brown's approval ratings of 25 or 26 percent in recent polls.

Though surveys have also shown that a majority of the public favors the 42-day limit, Britons are unhappy with Brown over a broad collection of other issues, including a sagging economy and perceptions of a leadership vacuum.

"Recent years have shown how forgetting Britain's moral compass has left our country less safe; so, on to the House of Lords -- once more the guardian of fundamental rights," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil liberties group Liberty.

Brown has staked much political capital on the anti-terrorism measure. He has campaigned for it publicly and passionately, describing it as a critical tool for law enforcement in an era of increasingly complex terrorism cases. "Our first duty is the protection of national security. We fail in our duty if we do not take preventative measures," he told legislators Wednesday at the start of a debate in the House of Commons.

David Cameron, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, called the bill unnecessary and noted that Ken Macdonald, Britain's top prosecutor, has said current law is sufficient to handle even major cases.

Cameron also suggested that Brown was sacrificing British traditions in a push aimed more at improving his political standing than protecting national security. "Isn't it clear that terrorists want to destroy our freedom, and when we trash our liberties, we do their work for them?" Cameron said. "This is not about the future of our prime minister. This is about our liberties."

But Tony Lloyd, a leading Labor member of Parliament, told reporters the vote "leaves the Labor government very much in tune with what the British public wants and what the needs of this nation are."