The "renegade" Lord.

Now Mr Smith spends a lot of his time pointing out the contradictions in the public positions of our elected and not so elected representatives. So, it is great to be able to report a real moment of political conviction from a perhaps unexpected source.

Speaking during a Debate in the House of Lords on Wednesday 25th July 2007, Scottish Conservative peer Lord Fraser of Carmyllie spoke with great fervour, even rage, in rejecting government plans for increasing the length of detention of terrorist suspects to 56 days saying:

“My Lords, I regard this as the greatest civil liberties outrage in modern times. It is quite outrageous. Whatever conciliatory noises my own Front Bench makes, I shall be a renegade on this. There is absolutely no way that I regard even 28 days as appropriate. Seven days is, in its own way, far too long. What is wrong with hours rather than days? I cannot believe that this will lead to anything other than sloppy and bad policing. I am in favour of good policing. If you allow the police 56 days to agree what should be done, I cannot believe that they will do anything for 55 days other than sit on their hands. That is simply wrong. I do not believe that day one is day one. What will the noble Baroness (Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the President of the Council) do, or am I simply alone in believing that 56 days is an outrage, and that she ought to be ashamed of herself?”

Is it naïve of Mr Smith to expect that just because Lord Fraser can draw on experience of having held the two most senior Scottish legal positions in government, namely Lord Advocate and Solicitor General, that the current government might take his objections on board and amend its proposals? Sadly, it is very naïve.