Climbdown or showdown for Blair over UK terror law

Opposition hardened yesterday to Tony Blair's controversial UK anti-terror bill, leaving the prime minister facing a hard choice - execute a humiliating climbdown or risk losing its powers completely.

Mr Blair is seeking to push the legislation through parliament by March 14, when current anti-terrorism powers allowing indefinite detention in jail of foreign terror suspects expire.

But having voted for major changes to the bill on Monday, parliament's unelected upper chamber, the House of Lords, demanded yesterday that it be scrapped altogether later in the year in order to start from scratch.

The Lords voted by 297 to 110 in favour of a "sunset clause", saying the law should lapse after November 30.

Mr Blair has rejected a limited shelf life for the law but his Conservative opponents say it is the price to pay for giving police greater powers over a high-risk period around an expected May general election.

"Parliament spent the last 700 years protecting our liberties," Conservative peer Lord Kingsland said. "It seems outrageous that we should be asked to allow an open-ended right to remove the most fundamental of them." Britain's highest court ruled late last year that the current measures infringed basic rights and should be scrapped.