Liberal Democrat Voice is currently running a poll, asking you how many days the Government should be allowed to detain people without charge [eyes right if you haven’t voted yet – Ed]. For anyone who cares about civil liberties this is a hot topic at the moment and its one of the issues to be debated this Thursday at a public meeting arranged by Sarah Teather MP.

Shami Chakrabarti, winner of LDV’s Liberal Voice of the Year 2007, and Director of Liberty, will be the principal speaker, along with a panel of other high-profile commentators and activists. The meeting will take place at the Willesden Green Library Centre in Brent at 7pm this Thursday. (Click here for a GoogleMap.)

The Government’s response to the terror attacks of the past few years has been to legislate in a way that undermines fundamental civil liberties. These Government measures have also disproportionately affected minority groups:

• 140,000 people who have never been charged with a criminal offence are on the National DNA database;

• You are 6 times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black and twice as likely to be stopped and searched if you are Asian;

• Labour’s plans to double the current limit for detaining terror suspects without charge would be the longest period in all of Western Europe;

• ID cards will soon see 49 pieces of personal information held about everyone in the country on one big database. In European countries that have ID cards, they have not been shown to stop terrorists

Sarah Teather is hosting this event in a location at the heart of her constituency, one of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in the country. Other experts on the panel will be Dr Daud Abudllah, the Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain and Steve Pope, the Editor the Editor of Britain’s best known African Caribbean newspaper The Voice.

The event is open to everyone, so please do come along. If you would like more details please contact Louise in Sarah’s constituency office on 020 8459 0455.