Peers reject terror detention plan

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Peers overwhelmingly rejected the highly controversial move by 309 votes to 118 after an impassioned debate.

The Prime Minister will now have to decide whether to press ahead with the proposal, amid growing speculation that it may be dropped.

Tony Blair suffered his first Commons defeat over a bid to extend detention to 90 days in 2005. Parliament agreed instead to a 28 day limit.

Mr Brown's attempt to extend that to 42 days scraped through the Commons by just nine votes in June, despite a rebellion by 36 Labour MPs.

The Government had to rely then on the votes of Democratic Unionists.

The huge scale of the Lords defeat will make Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wary of trying to force the measure through the Commons again.

And even if she did, there's likely to be a prolonged period of "ping-pong" with peers before Mr Brown would have decide whether to use the Parliament Act to ram the measure through the Lords.

The latest bid to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects was rejected by a coalition of Tory and Liberal Democrat peers and Labour rebels.

They backed a move by crossbencher Lord Dear, a former chief inspector of constabulary, to bar any extension beyond 28 days in the Counter-Terrorism Bill.