Brown's new terror proposals

Gordon Brown has announced in the Sunday papers that he wants to get with terrorism. Stop me if we've been here before. According to the Sunday Times he will "put his personal authority behind a move to allow evidence from telephone taps to be used in court to ensure terror suspects do not escape the law". "Personal Authority" looks as though Labour have got rid of one control freak, and replaced him with another.

But on a serious note, we have been here before. The problem is that the government seem determined to constantly play party politics when it comes this issue. They constantly come up with poor legislation, leaving the opposition with no alternative but to vote against it (control orders a prime example), and then accuse them of not caring about the security of the nation.

But that simply is not true, its the bill that they vote on that is rubbish. They are voting against poor proposals not because they don't care. In fact, its because they do care that they turn up to voice their concerns in such large numbers.

A good example of the voting patterns on good and bad bills has been seen recently, the education reform bill was a good set of proposals - Tories voted for it, Terrorism legislation was flawed - Tories voted against. Gordon Brown needs to take that on board.

So what does Gordon Brown propose, well nothing new to be quite frank. He wants to revisit to 90 day detention of terror suspects row, but like last time if he doesn't supply the evidence then he will find this hard to pass.

He has also wants to Boost the national security budget, already doubled since September 11, 2001, to more than £2 billion a year in the forthcoming spending review. But again I'm sure I've heard this in a previous budget speech, so nothing new, yet again.

The only new proposal that I have seen from him is that he wants to give MPs and peers greater powers to scrutinise the work of the security and intelligence services, allowing them to cross-examine the heads of MI5 and MI6 in public, which is in direct opposition to Blair and Captain Calamity John Reid's position. Now, I can think of a perfect place to start with this idea, how about the 7/7 bombings to find out what went wrong.

But, and this is a big but, Gordon has to ensure these proposals are well thought out, and ultimately legal, and as for the 90-day detention, supply the evidence that this works.