Brilliant, I’ll be posting this around for sure!

Good news. Two quick points:

1 – It might be helpful if we framed the question in terms of ‘should innocent people be locked up for 42 days?’ Everyone is innocent until proven guilty (for now) and I think this may get the point across.

2 – It’s curious how much people hang debates on opinion polls. Even if 90% of the population supported indefinite detention of suspects it wouldn’t make it right – popularity and being right are two quite different things.

Graham: I think this poll is important as it doesn’t try to lead people in to thinking about innocent people. I understand what you’re getting at, but this poll talks about ultimate guilt, not presumed. It’s important that people are asked about their opinion of holding people regardless of if they are guilty in the end or not.

On the second point I completely agree, but the “important” people do hang things on opinion polls, so when suddenly their arguments are turned on their heads by polls like this we need to drive this home. It must be said though that it’s unfortunately frequently that Brown and Smith talk about 42 day detention as “right” regardless of the facts, so obviously not everything is hung on them.

In part I’m frustrated (though obviously thankful) that my MP is already against 42 days, it’d feel more productive to be in a constituency where I had an MP that I, and others around me, could try and convince to change their mind. We need to get people in those constituencies thinking the same way now.

Thanks for the pointer to the poll but please don’t call them terrorist suspects.

Indeed, actually following Tim Collin’s piece in the Telegraph I’ve taken the opportunity to stop using the word terrorist as much as possible. I think the time has passed to buy in to the fear of “terrorism” over the fear of anything else.

Public opinion is waking up. The opinion of the security establishment of the 42 days proposal was neatly summarised by its most incisive voice, Lady Manningham-Buller, in the Lords yesterday:

“I don’t see on a practical basis, as well as a principled one, that these proposals are in any way workable.”

Or to put that another way: ‘Does not fit with what the security services are doing. Conflicts with the proper objectives in combating terrorism. And completely unworkable.’

The security establishment is an unfamiliar ally for Liberal Conspirators, but a welcome one.

Good spot. WIll be covering.

What the whole debate seems to have lost sight of is the alternative of charging a suspect at an earlier stage (possibly with a lesser charge) and then continuing to gather evidence afterwards.

No reasonable person could object to the ammendments to the law required to allow the police to continue questioning a suspect after he had been charged and a measure of this kind would enable the truly dangerous suspects to be kept in custody whilst preventing the police from going on ‘fishing trips’

John, post-charge questioning is in the Counter Terrorism Bill.

Also, it’s interesting to note that a possibly biased poll comissioned by a bunch of animal lovers leading up to the fox hunting ban showed that 23% of people were against the ban. Taking in to account the people that change their mind in this poll half way through, that’s the same value as support 42 day detention.

Inconsistency, hmmm?

I’d like to see some analysis of this poll by the experts.

Aha: at least one has:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/1244

Always sceptical about polls – not least because more than half of the british public was in favour of the iraq war for a three day period around it’s declaration according to several polls – which in itself in no way made the arguments any more right or wrong for those three days.

However, am I the only one who fears post charge questioning somewhat more than 42 days?

I ask that because if some one is charged with theft they can then be questioned by a jailor and accuser for far longer than 42 days – That is a dangerous position of power and comes pretty close to ending the right to silence by the threat of reprisals.

What is to stop three unscrupulous coppers under pressure to ‘get’ some one charging them for assaulting a police officer and then ensuring they can question the suspect with no end in sight?

“Always sceptical about polls – not least because more than half of the british public was in favour of the iraq war for a three day period around it’s declaration according to several polls – which in itself in no way made the arguments any more right or wrong for those three days. ”

Of course it didn’t. It baffles me why some people see polls as defining what is right and wrong. All they do is tell us what people think, regardless of whether they are ill-formed, ignorant or downright wrong.

There is a statistic occassionally quoted that some poll found that 60%+ of Americans though that France was in Canada. I’ve never found the particular poll, so I think it’s probably apocryphal, but even if it was true, it wouldn’t mean France was in Canada, only that a lot of people were rather ignorant about geography.

I’ve posted this comment on Anthony’s blog, and I’ll post it here:

If the public are ignorant of the arguments about something, then generally speaking a poll should not try to educate them about it, because it only serves to make them more informed than the wider public they are supposed to be representative of!

I disagree with this because people don’t have conversations about issues without context. And that context matters. So immediately after a terrorist atrocity support for ‘lock them and throw away the key’ might be higher than in an otherwise peaceful environment.

To that extent you could argue no point doing a poll immediately after an event because the context is still fresh in their minds.

(and I add)
In this context the pollsters have provided a context to their questioning. In the other poll they may not have provided the same context… but then their wording was very different – with the same intention of providing a specific context for the question.

No poll is perfect, and I don’t see why this is less perfect than the earlier Telegraph poll.

Whether or not the poll is perfect is immaterial. It was our desperate government, unable to win the argument with an intelligent case, that fell back on unsubstantiated claims of overwhelming support – something that never had any grounds in reality.

Margin4Error, the Joint Committee on Human Rights supported post-charge questioning, but also pointed out the problems and called for safeguards (a term becomingly rapidly meaningless), eg:

A prison governor falls a long way short of a judge as an independent safeguard against abuse and we note that the Government has provided no evidence to substantiate its assertion that prison governors thoroughly scrutinise any police requests for production of a suspect for questioning. “After the event” judicial powers to exclude evidence obtained by oppressive means are also inferior to legal safeguards designed to prevent such oppressive questioning happening in the first place. We therefore remain of the view that the requirement of judicial authorisation and strict time limits must be set out on the face of the legislation.

I think the Bill changed to reflect some of those concerns but I’m not sure about the extent of the changes.

I agree with you Sunny, there’s a wide difference between framing the question to only deal with “terrorists” and framing a question to make people think about the principles of our legal system and therefore everyone it potentially affects. To say that a poll like this is inaccurate because it better informs poll respondents than the mass public is only to show that the public NEED more information.

I am no supporter of 42 days but the reason the public has come round to this is because the Tory Press have sided with Cameron, and portrayed Davis as a knight in shinning armour taking a principled stand. The fact that he rang up his biggest opponent in his constituency, The Liberal Democrats, and negotiated them standing down before he did his speech on the steps of Westminster shows how un principled Davis is.

But Labour, New or Old should not be locking people up without trial and they will get a bloody nose on this issue.

So what if that is the reason people have come around to it? If Satan and the Yorkshire ripper rose again to have a love child that managed to persuade the public that 42 days is a bad thing (if this public opinion wasn’t present before the 11th of June, which I think it was) then I’d be thankful to them for doing so. Take your blessings wherever they come from.

Let’s be honest. If an organisation had commissioned a poll on this issue which included reading out a paragraph outlining the government’s case with no balancing material, then asking two questions about terrorist atrocities and then asking the 42 day question, then we’d all be going on about how they’d rigged it and any findings were garbage.

It’s tempting not to bother to scrutinise research which comes up with the answers that we want, but it is a really bad idea. This poll doesn’t tell us whether public opinion supports the government’s policy or not. n.b. for those comparing, the YouGov poll asked the question without any background arguments one way or the other.

The useful bit of this poll is the one which shows how additional information helps to change people’s minds. What they should have done was to ask the 42 day question first, and then tested out different arguments to see which were most effective in persuading people to change their minds. For example, should we be trying to frame the debate as being about ’6 weeks’, rather than ’42 days’, or making the link explicit in people’s minds that this is part of the regular legal system, rather than being completely separate as it is perceived at the moment, and so on. This is the sort of thing that we really need to know, so that we can make sure that all of our arguments resonate and persuade people to support us.

But we don’t have a lot of that information because the Rowntree Reform Trust wanted to make sure that they had a headline about how we have already won the argument, rather than finding out how it is best to win the argument.

Don speaks truth. Many of the people here, including me, rightly criticised [Christian group X who's name I've forgotten] in the 20-weeks abortion debate for “presenting some context” to the public before its widely reported “time to go back to coathangers” poll – we shouldn’t ignore the same tactics when they’re done by someone we think is right.

[to me, 42 days sounds longer than 6 weeks; it'd be interesting to see how the public perceives it...]

It asks people, in a fairly objective manner, what people think about detention times before charging people (amongst the DNA stuff). It prefaces it only with an innocuous description of what the question will be with a hint of reminder that Britain’s history is one of protecting liberties. Based on this people answer that they don’t like long detention times without charge.

What is there to criticise? No it’s not a damning debunking of 42 days, but it is a very good poll for showing that the public don’t sit easy with long periods of detention without charge. It shows people are willing to forgo liberties more if terrorism is in the equation, but that essentially they still believe in not holding someone for long period of time.

Why is it the poll needs any background information? So that people can automatically recognise that this is a poll about subject X and so they *should* answer in a certain way? I prefer polls to be like this, the appeal to peoples sense of reason rather than other polls that appeal to peoples politics.

>But we don’t have a lot of that information because the Rowntree Reform Trust wanted to make sure that they had a headline about how we have already won the argument, rather than finding out how it is best to win the argument.

I’m not sure what the division of work was between Rowntree and Democratic Audit, who are the contact details for questions.

As with Don and John B, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pour a bit of cold water on some people’s enthusiasm and point out this poll, as with most polls, makes pretty obvious use of leading questions.

I stand by my comments in an earlier thread – what people want is for the police and government to do the ‘right thing’, which is to speedily exonerate the innocent while doing whatever is necessary to convict the guilty.

Quite how you translate that into a balanced system of pre-charge detention and post-charge questioning is something that flummoxes most people because there is simply too little concrete, reliable information in the public domain to make a clear judgment.

Part of the problem is that terrorism cases, like those where organised crime is a factor, to not lend themselves to the routine of bread and butter police work, i.e. make an arrest, gather evidence and charge or release the suspect. These cases have a big intelligence gathering component – having got the suspect one of the key objectives is that of trying to identify possible accomplices in order to ‘roll-up’ any terrorist/criminal networks the investigation uncovers.

That’s got very little to do with the job of securing sufficient evidence to charge a specific individual and its there that we should be directing some of the questions, asking how much of this extended detention period that the government want to put in place is predicated on the demands of intelligence gathering as opposed to simply making a sufficiently good case to justify a charge.

From what I can see, the argument for using intercept evidence is critical to the debate as I suspect that in many cases, the use of intercept evidence would enable the police to lay a lesser charge of conspiracy or one of the inchoate offences, at a very early stage – certainly within 14 days and most likely within seven.

Its arguments like that that are most likely to sway public opinion without having to rely on push-polling and its there that we need to focus.

Opinion without fact is prejudice, fact without opinion is useless.

I’m afraid you’re going to have to detail these “obvious” leading questions Unity. I can see your argument on the Liberty poll, but it’s going to take some amazing gymnastics to convince me here that the questions as put lead people to do anything other than think outside the context of single case examples.

28 – three ways to get the answers that you want from an opinion poll:

1. Provide background information which supports a particular point of view before asking any questions, priming people to be thinking about the issue in a particular way

2. Ask questions about other issues before the headline question

3. Offer five options, with the option that you don’t want people to pick being at one end of the options given.

This poll does all three, and so can’t be compared with other polls which just ask the question and offer the options of ‘support’ or ‘oppose’.

Sir Humphrey explains it here – http://users.aims.ac.za/~mackay/probability/survey.html

1. God forbid that we frame people to think in terms of innocent until proven guilty before they consider detention times!

2. And how do people know which is the headline question? I’d say that it’s much better to ask questions, regardless of the order, that range the subject to ensure clarity of thought on the subject.

3. I know about this, however the result don’t show any regard for this worry, especially as the support for different lengths of time changes with the context given. This shows that people have considered their answers.

To me the poll isn’t meant to be a direct contradiction to other polls, it is to show that with a little bit more thought and a little more perspective people come to a different conclusion. I think the stance taken by some is a little disappointing given there is no way that you can prove the public’s stance on 42 days without taking a broader view and giving more relevant information, as was done with relating the length of time to a comparable sentence for a crime.

I’m with Don, John B and Unity.

With regard to Unity’s point about “lack of information in the public domain”… well when I was at school we had no lessons in law at all, we had to opt to learn GCSE or A level law, for example. There was no ‘basic course’ if you like. Likewise for the traditional and sound principles such as habeas corpus and fair trials etc. I have no idea what it’s like nowadays but I suspect it is the same.

If it is, that’s a fault in the system.

As with Don and John B, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pour a bit of cold water on some people’s enthusiasm and point out this poll, as with most polls, makes pretty obvious use of leading questions.

But in terms of obtaining results, that is no different to asking specific questions worded in particular ways (‘terrorist suspects’) or commissioning a poll after a big event.

Both are inherently biased methodologies. So in that sense this poll is no WORSE than the earlier poll, which I also believe asked leading questions.

And to be honest, the context offered in either polls is roughly the same. It comes down to how you word the question. Of course I prefer the wording of this poll over the previous one.

This poll does all three, and so can’t be compared with other polls which just ask the question and offer the options of ’support’ or ‘oppose’.

and that poll worded its questions in a particular way that would obtain a particular response. It doesn’t make that poll any more right.

The only surefire way to track any change would be to ask the same question over a period of time. Clearly that hasn’t happened here. And furthermore its difficult to obtain a true answer on 42 days especially when the legislation is so complicated that even ‘high information’ westminster watchers are confused by it.

In that context saying that the public supports 42 days is silly because the public doesn’t know what ’42 days’ actually means.

So this poll is really as valid as the previous negative one – meaning both are just snapshots which illustrate the public doesn’t know what is actually at stake.

Does we recommend English Grammar be reintroduced into the curriculum?

The thing is we’re not looking for a trend of change are we Sunny? This is the first poll that has gone any way to trying to ensure people think in perspective of their wider beliefs about law enforcement, and we’re still happy to nay say it. I don’t deny it’s not perfect, but it’s a damn good start in showing a trend that if you stop framing the debate as being about locking up sure-fire terrorists, people stop supporting the measure so readily.

Unity,

Both reviews of public opinion can be viewed as push polling. It is a dog whistle question to ask the general public if they think terrorists should be locked up for 42 days. The key word being terrorist. That being an assumption of the pollster.

I am not at all clear what principle is being defended in refusing to use intercept evidence. Modern technology is, after all just another form of communication. A witness that overheard a suspect in a pub would be allowed, what is the difference in an intercepted mobile phone conversation?

Ukliberty makes a fundamental point. Which I think deserves to be taken up as a theme here. Why is it that law is not explained to us at school? That idea ought to run and run. We are expected to make a judgement out of ignorance, on a subject the state deliberately refuses to educate us on. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Lee,

It is interesting, is it not, that when words change, reactions change too?

The first set of polls was just as biased, in their own sweet way, as the second set of polls.

Both polls fail any reasonable neutrality test, I think. All either proves is that the framing of a question can get you the result you want. Which is a trifle scary.

Especially with the evidential weight that is being placed on uninformed opinion.

Which, I think we’d both agree, was the point of David Davies stand. To inform, to educate, whatever….

*shrugs* I’m obviously in a minority, I can’t see anything wrong with this poll. It’s right to frame questions with both innocence and guilt in the frame, it’s right to ask people questions in a manner that means they go through comparative thought. If I was trying to reason with someone and asked them “How long do you think you should keep people in detention without charge if they are suspects in a terrorism case” and they said 6 weeks, I would then ask “Even considering they could be innocent and X% of all people arrested on terrorism charges are released without charge and aren’t followed up?” and “How long would you think it’s ok to lock up a rape suspect without charge?” and “You do realise this is the same as a minor prison sentence, but without any charge being brought against a person?”

This is essentially, in a different form, what the poll does. If that’s “biased” or “leading” then I’m afraid we have a very perverse and warped way of viewing what a balanced argument is.

37 – there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with the poll, as long as it is reported as being a survey of the opinions of people once they have heard the arguments that you mention. Since most people haven’t heard these arguments, it should not be reported as representative of current public opinion.

It is a general rule of all arguments, both good and bad, that if you are able to make sure that people hear your side of the argument and not the other side, support for your position will increase. I can’t think of any liberal way which might make that possible, however

The other polls on this issue try a bit harder (though aren’t perfect) to make sure that the people they are polling are representative of the general public, either by asking people a question about a subject without giving them background information, as YouGov did, or which gives information on both sides of the argument, as the Economist’s poll did.

As an analogy, if the trade unions were to commission an opinion poll which started off by reminding people about some of the good things that the Labour government has done and is doing, and then asked people who they intended to vote for, the poll would undoubtedly show a much higher level of support for Labour than recent opinion polls have.

Labour supporters could well argue that this shows that when there is a proper debate about policies rather than personalities, support for Labour increases. But it wouldn’t increase our understanding about who was likely to win the next election, or how popular Labour actually is.

I think you’re thinking about some different polls don.

The economist:

“Currently, the police may detain suspected terrorists for up to four weeks
before charging or releasing them. The Government wants to extend this period
to six weeks.”

The question gives no background, and cements the idea we’re talking about terrorists who are suspects to the police.

“‘These days it can take some weeks to analyse all the evidendence against
suspected terrorists; it is right to be able to detain them for up to six weeks’”

Or: The police need this time because it is a fact that these days it can take the six weeks to find and analyse the evidence, do you agree?

‘It is a long-established principle of British justice that suspects should either be
released or know the charge against them within days; the proposed six weeks detention period is far too long’”

Or: Never mind if they are guilty or not, we have british history to defend and that is more important than actually charging a terrorist.

Hmm, yeah…REAL good background information there…

The other poll…(I assume you mean the daily telegraph poll)

“Currently, the police may hold suspected terrorists for up to 28 days
before having to charge or release them. The Government wishes to
extend this time limit in exceptional circumstances to 42 days.
Do you support or oppose extending the time limit to 42 days? ”

It again frames the question as if the police are running out of time at 28 days, that terrorists can be released at 28 days if the police don’t have enough to “get them”. It also doesn’t give any meaning to exceptional circumstances, which is eroneous given that Jacqui Smith doesn’t have to give any reason when she brings it up in parliament. Hardly exceptional.

The question with this is, of course, when talking about terrorists potentially being let free, who is not going to support it? Only 24% of people according to that poll.

So one poll asks people to either support or oppose keeping terrorists in detention for long enough to get a charge, the other asks if you put some lofty principles ahead of putting a terrorist behind bars. This most recent poll asks you to consider that every person arrested could be innocent or guilty, and to keep that in consideration when thinking about detention times. This is how people SHOULD be thinking.

In the end, I agree that at least we can generally agree it shows that government claiming support is spurious given how different these polls have all been from each other.

Douglas, I just had a quick look at the National Curriculum. Citizenship seems the closest subject to what we’re looking for – but I’m not entirely sure what it entails. However, unlike Religious Education, Citizenship isn’t a statutory requirement until Key Stages 3 & 4.

Thanks UK Liberty – I’m glad I’m not the only one who visits a liberal website who is concerned about post charge detention.

OK, I can certainly see the concerns with post charge detention…but to do that they have to charge them, and I’m assuming then “process” that charge within a certain time. If they stitch someone up for assaulting a police officer how long until that person then has to go before a court? And what about the need for evidence to charge someone?

I also thought, maybe Unity said it, that ultimately you still won’t be able to force someone to answer questions. Your right to silence always remains intact?

If anyone wants to clarify these things

A superb illustration of the general principle that you can make a polls show anything you like. So let’s all get back to the principles shall we.

The important thing is to get people to realise that the world is staggeringly safer and more stable today than it has been for well over a hundred years.

The current crop of terrorists are nasty, ill adjusted criminals but they present no existential threat to this or any other democratic country (apart from Pakistan).

This is not to denigrate the suffering of those who have been affected by terrorism any more than it denigrates the suffering of those who suffer from rare diseases to point out that the disease is, well, rare. The Government’s reaction to the terrorist threat is about as sensible as ordering a national vaccination programme against denghe fever.

Lee @42, there are two types of charge today. The norm is the full code charge, or full test, where the charge is only made if a conviction is thought “more likely than not” to succeed – this is intended to protect us against prosecutions with no realistic chance of success.

Half of terrorism prosecutions in recent years have proceeded from “threshold charges”. A threshold charge is one based on reasonable suspicion the individual committed the offence. 92% of such cases have resulted in convictions.

You need admissible evidence for both types of charge. Note that an arrest may result from inadmissible evidence.

Your right to silence does not always remain intact. Adverse inferences may be drawn in some circumstances.

But ultimately, if there is no admissible evidence, how likely are you to be charged (say at 28 days) and detained for a further 14 days being questioned? Cheers for the other information so far.

YouGov are polling again about 42 days, questioning about the bill, asking based on time police have. Will be interesting to see what people say (and given I’ve forgotten the question already, how leading it was), though I doubt that the majority will be on “less than 28 days” when one answer is “Police should have as long as they need to question terrorist suspects”

Lee @46, a more interesting poll might be based on the question, “how long would you be prepared to spend in jail while the police investigate their suspicion you’ve been involved in terrorism?”

Or, “Three out of five people held for over 28 days were innocent and released without further suspicion, surveillance, or made subject to control orders. How long would you be prepared to [etc]?”

Providing real and factual information is unfortunately deemed to be leading and thus worthless, alas this is the world we operate in.

There was as much leading information there as there is in the question, “how long should terrorist suspects be locked up”!

But ultimately, if there is no admissible evidence, how likely are you to be charged (say at 28 days) and detained for a further 14 days being questioned? Cheers for the other information so far.

You cannot be charged at all if there is no evidence that either is or will be admissible at trial.

Lee, real facts happen to be entirely contingent on the circumstances – objective truth is a different category of knowledge. Which is exactly how the muddle created by this piece of legislation is enabled.

I mean there is some sort of symmetry in the irony that this government struggles to encourage political participation while seeking to repress all political protest as criminal terrorism (and then engages in behaviour like the ‘tory toff’ campaign in the C&N by-election).

Legislation frameworks must be seen as existing in conjunction with the organisational framework in a symbiotic relationship.

This Labour government sees its constituency in providing additional support for the ‘weak’ (whoever they may be), so any expression of power is a challenge to their superiority. So it has exhausted it’s budget and legislative timetable on minority concerns in an attempt to create their inclusion, albeit by artificial means. Conservatives use a similar logic matrix, constructed from the opposite standpoint of power relationships.

The bubble of their logic is popped when extreme conditions or events prevail and, for example, members of minority religious groups develop into suicide bombers or a universal flat-rate poll tax is implemented. Under such conditions their logic becomes exposed as contradictory, seriously impractical and/or unpopular, and the regime unravels as the instability created by its inconsistent policy approach is exacerbated – a policy U-turn might temporaily stave off complete collapse, but confidence is permanently damaged.

The excessive amounts of money thrown at the NHS after 1997 might easily have procured a beefed-up police force more able to respond to the demands of criminal investigations, but Labour didn’t consider this their overriding priority at the time and are suffering for their lack of foresight in this area. Would additional police officers on current pay scales using existing powers have been a better answer than similar numbers of PCSOs on lower pay scales to supplement the additional powers and resources ‘needed’ by existing forces to deal with evolving ‘special’ situations?

As a country we face a political choice, and what we’ve got is the consequence of our choices. Personally I blame those who fail to underline the real choices we are offered. Too often we hear that ‘they are all the same’, or that a new orthodoxy/paradigm has been created, when this is just a bland generalisation allowed all too often to go unchallenged – we are not the same, so why do we think our politicians will be/ought to be?

I’ve been reading a number of counterfactuals recently, and I’d love to see some discussion on how we can retrospectively analyse policy choices. We can decry Thatcher all we want, but I’m completely certain that today even less people would have prefered Michael Foot than they didn’t back then.

“There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying.” – Robert Evans