Gordon Brown faces defeat on 42-day detention as 30 Labour MPs plan to vote against bill

Gordon Brown faces a humiliating defeat over plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

More than 30 Labour MPs are understood to be planning to vote against the Government in the crunch vote on the Counter Terrorism Bill next Wednesday.

Up to a dozen more are expected to abstain and ministers have yet to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party to support the anti-terror laws, meaning Mr Brown could be defeated despite Labour's 67 Commons majority.

In a potentially critical intervention yesterday, the Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald bluntly dismissed the series of concessions unveiled by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to win over Labour rebels, insisting that he still believes that the extension from 28 days is not needed.

The timing of his remarks, a week before the House of Commons vote, could not be worse for Gordon Brown.

It could also prove influential for Labour rebels unconvinced by the amended Bill.

Many regard Sir Ken’s view as the most significant, as he heads the body charged with prosecuting terror cases.

The Crown Prosecution Service boss said the offer of improved judicial and parliamentary scrutiny earlier this week had not persuaded him there was a need to go beyond the 28-day limit.

He told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: ‘If you think something isn’t necessary, the means of delivering it are probably rather irrelevant.’

Labour whips are said to be courting Democratic Unionist MPs, whose votes could decide the contest.

Mr Brown has been personally phoning MPs to urge them to support the 42-day period.

Mrs Smith also put in a star performance at a meeting of Labour MPs on Monday to make the case for the extension, which was seen to have won over enough MPs to get the policy through the Commons.

But the Standard revealed yesterday that rebels, led by Hendon Labour MP Andrew Dismore, chairman of the joint committee on human rights, are refusing to cave in to the pressure from the Government.

The committee said concessions put forward by the Home Secretary on Monday were insufficient to persuade it to back the new anti-terror laws.

The proposals would be in breach of the right to liberty in Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it added.

Ministers were urged to scrap the proposals and instead set out details of how they would opt out of human rights obligations in the case of a terror threat.

Limits on the new powers, so they could be used only cases of a "grave exceptional" terror threat or attack, were not tight enough.

A new requirement for the Home Secretary to declare she was satisfied there was a serious enough emergency to justify using the powers was "not, in reality, much of a safeguard" without meaningful independent scrutiny.

Ensuring Parliament got to vote on the issue within seven days of the powers being invoked, rather than 30, made little difference as the debate would be "heavily circumscribed by the risk of prejudicing future trials".

The committee proposed lowering the charging threshold for terror cases, introducing new offences, allowing intercept evidence in court and imposing surveillance on suspects.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: "The Government should not count its chickens before Wednesday. MPs are very worried about this bad law."