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A useful reminder to those of us who regularly associate left-wing politics with freedom and right-wing politics with authoritarianism: it ain’t necessarily so. The Labour Party of Gordon Brown has pushed for legislation that would allow the government to detain and hold people without charges for 42 days. It promises to use the power judiciously. It asks the British people to relax and trust their government.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party’s Pauline Neville-Jones has risen before the Parliament to oppose the measure. An excerpt from her speech, which I heard broadcast yesterday over C-SPAN Radio:

At the heart of the debate is one central question: what type of society are we trying to create, protect and secure? After all, it is on the effects of our actions, not our intentions—however virtuous these may be—that we will be judged. Extending pre-charge detention seeks to guard against the terrorist threat by giving more power to the state. We take a different view from that of the Government. Security measures should not have as their sole focus a reduction in the threat, essential as this is. If security is to be sustainable over the long term, security measures must also facilitate and protect a united society based on shared liberal values and the mutual trust of a free, responsible citizenry. Citizens must be able to repose their trust in each other, not in the state for fear of each other. The impact of this legislation on different communities is, therefore, not a minor, subordinate matter. It goes to the heart of our chances of reconciling freedom with security.

Will the proposed extension achieve and protect an open and unified society? The answer is emphatically no. It represents yet another attempt on the part of the Government to abridge, without sufficient justification, fundamental democratic rights and freedom that have underpinned our society for centuries and which we have defended against tyranny on so many occasions. The Government are putting those rights and freedoms at risk in a reactionary fashion. Terrorists want to undermine our freedoms and way of life by provoking the state into putting in place repressive measures. We therefore risk, in effect, doing their job for them. No doubt many noble Lords will make comparisons with other common-law jurisdictions to illustrate the point that our allies are addressing the terrorist threat without draconian extensions of detention.

Neville-Jones is not the only prominent member of the Conservative Party to speak out in opposition to the 42-day detention legislation. Former Prime Minister John Major has written in the Times of London about the measure:

The Government’s legislation to permit 42 days pre-charge detention brings to the fore the wider question of civil liberties. In their response to the security threat ministers have dragged us ever closer to a society in which ancient rights are seriously damaged. I doubt this is the Government’s intention, but it is the effect. It began with Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq was justified by overegging the threat of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction - perhaps that error was genuine.

But the case for war was embellished by linking the Iraqi regime to the 9/11 attacks on New York - for which there is not one shred of evidence. As we moved towards war, that misinformation was compounded by the implication that Saddam’s Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom, which plainly it was not.

These actions damaged our reputation overseas. And, at home - on the back of the threat of terror and two serious incidents in London - they foreshadowed a political climate in which civil liberties are slowly being sacrificed.

We now know that, despite repeated denials, our Government was complicit in rendition, or - to put it in plain terms - the transfer of suspects out of civilised jurisdiction to a place where they could be held without charge for a lengthy period.

Although the intention was presumably to garner information, such action is hardly in the spirit of the nation that gave the world Magna Carta, or the Parliament that gave it habeas corpus.

I don’t believe that sacrifice of due process can be justified. If we are seen to defend our own values in a manner that does violence to them, then we run the risk of losing those values. Even worse, if our own standards fall, it will serve to recruit terrorists more effectively than their own propaganda could ever hope to.

That is no longer theoretical: we now have home-grown terrorists - born in Britain, not in Waziristan. Will they be encouraged or discouraged to rally to militancy if we bypass the sober rituals of law with which we are familiar?

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The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” This is a demagogue’s trick. We do have something to fear - the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies.

This is not a United Kingdom that I recognise and Parliament should not accept it.

Simply because a conservative says something does not make it untrue. And simply because someone identifying themselves with the left proposes something does not make it a good idea. In Britain right now, people need to listen to the conservatives.