A scathing report of Paddington Green police station deals a blow to the 42-day lobby.

The prospect of Parliament backing 42 days’ pre-charge detention in terrorist cases seems to have receded even further this week with the publication of an inside account of conditions at the police station where terrorist suspects are normally held.

Lady Neville-Jones, the Conservative spokesman in the Lords, has promised that Tory peers will ‘oppose the proposal in its entirety’ when the Counter-Terrorism Bill containing it begins its committee stage next week.

So far, the debate has largely been one of principle. But the government’s opponents can now draw on some very practical arguments. According to a new report, conditions at Paddington Green police station in west London ‘are not acceptable for persons held for periods of up to 14 days, let alone 28 or 42’.

That’s the view of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The CPT, as it’s always called, is nothing to do with the EU. It was set up by the Council of Europe, which now has 47 member states, under a convention agreed in 1987. Members travel round Europe inspecting places of detention and the CPT submits reports to governments which are published several months later.

Last December, the CPT inspected the conditions in which suspects were detained in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000. Its report claims the CPT has no intention of entering into the debate on 42 days’ detention. But, the report adds, existing powers to detain suspects for 28 days ‘are a matter of considerable concern to the CPT’. There would be even greater concern if detention were longer.

It is not the pre-charge questioning itself that worries the committee so much as where it takes place. ‘In the interests of the prevention of ill-treatment,’ the CPT says, ‘the sooner a criminal suspect passes into the hands of a custodial authority, which is functionally and institutionally separate from the police, the better.’ Using unusually strong language, the CPT says it ‘must insist that neither the existing nor any new provisions in this area should result in criminal suspects spending a prolonged period of time in police custody’.

By ‘prolonged’ the CPT means more than two weeks. ‘Transfer to a prison should in all cases be obligatory if detention of a terrorist suspect beyond 14 days is authorised,’ it says. ‘Preferably, such a transfer should occur at a much earlier stage.’

Paddington Green was never intended for long-term incarceration. ‘The cells provided a very austere environment and there was minimal access to natural light,’ the CPT notes. Exercise was limited to 20 minutes a day and took place in a cordoned-off section of the car-park.

I have not yet seen the government’s response to the CPT recommendation of a 14-day maximum period in police detention, but it is not hard to predict what the Ministry of Justice will say. This is not the first time the CPT has told Britain that conditions at Paddington Green were not adequate for more than a few days’ detention. It had said the same thing in 2005.

‘Regrettably,’ said the CPT this week, ‘no improvements had been made’ to conditions at the police station when it returned in 2007. ‘It is high time that this problem was resolved,’ it said.

Responding to the earlier report, ministers promised that detainees being held for more than 14 days would be transferred to prison ‘where appropriate’.

But the CPT is not falling for that one again. Although these detainees are now meant to be transferred to prison ‘as soon as is practicable’, this need not happen if it would prevent the investigation being conducted diligently and expeditiously, or if the prisoner had asked to stay in the police station.

These ‘exceptions have become very much the rule’, says the CPT. It doubts whether questioning a suspect in prison rather than in a police station would ever jeopardise an investigation, and says that allowing suspects to ‘request’ continuing police detention is ‘fundamentally flawed if the aim is to prevent ill-treatment’.

But, says the government, a prisoner cannot be detained for longer than 48 hours without judicial authority. Detainees must be brought before a judge at regular intervals. And ever more elaborate arrangements for judicial supervision are being offered by the government in its attempt to gain support for its Counter-Terrorism Bill.

That sounds good – until you discover that detainees do not come before a judge at all. They are brought before a video camera and television monitor. The judge is in the same police station, but the entire proceedings are conducted through CCTV.

‘From the point of view of making an accurate assessment of the physical and psychological state of a detainee,’ says the CPT, ‘nothing can replace bringing the person concerned into the direct physical presence of the judge.’ And it is harder for the detainee to complain about ill-treatment if all contact is through a video link.

Last time these complaints were made by the CPT, ministers tried to pass the buck to the judiciary. A judge, they said, ‘has ultimate responsibility for deciding whether the physical presence of a detainee at a hearing is necessary’.

Not good enough, says the CPT: ‘The physical presence of the detainee should be seen as an obligation, not as an option open to the judicial authority nor as a right that a detained person might choose to waive’.

All in all, then, this is a deeply depressing report. As the government tries to win over the waverers, the CPT’s findings are likely to drive potential supporters of 42 days firmly into the opposition lobby.