12:54pm UK, Friday June 06, 2008

Holding terror suspects without charge for 42 days is more likely to boost terrorist recruitment than effectively tackle the security threat, Sir John Major has said.

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The former Conservative Prime Minister's comments in The Times come after the joint committee on human rights said it remained opposed to the extension.

This was despite a series of concessions outlined by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in a final bid to head off a highly-damaging Labour backbench revolt.

Sir John also said the Government's response to terrorism had eroded civil liberties and the invasion of Iraq had damaged Britain's reputation overseas.

His comments are a further blow to the Government's efforts to win support for the 42-day increase ahead of a vote in the Commons next week.

In one of his fiercest attacks on Labour since he was defeated in the general election in 1997, Sir John described plans to hold terror suspects for 42 days without charge as bogus and little more than scaremongering.

"I don't believe that sacrifice of due process can be justified. If we are seen to defend our own values in a manner that does violence to them, then we run the risk of losing those values.

"Even worse, if our own standards fall, it will serve to recruit terrorists more effectively than their own propaganda could ever hope to," he said.

"The Government has introduced measures to protect against terrorism. These go beyond anything contemplated when Britain faced far more regular - and no less violent - assaults from the IRA.

"The justification of these has sometimes come close to scaremongering."