The writer of this article, Lord Falconer used to be Secretary of State for Justice.
At a more general level, your point is valid, but on this specific discussion, less so.
My comment (which I think I repeated here among other places) was, "maybe they are afraid of a second Viking age."
And yet it was used, for neither "reasonable" nor "legally" have any objective meaning. Both are convenient fictions to allow otherwise objectionable acts to gain the imprimatur of legitimacy.
"In his role as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer sought to make it easier for government bodies to refuse to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act (2000), "
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Falconer,_Baron_Falcone...
Alternatively he might be angry that the overly broad legislation that he was involved with has been used an imperfect way and justified the criticism that it received. I lean a bit further toward getting one over on the Tories though.
Put specific cases in which the law is applicable into the law itself, and specifically exclude as many applications as you can see that it shouldn't be applied for.
Giving broad powers to police and trusting them, just like trusting any human with broad powers, is a recipe for disaster. But then again we all knew this, I'm glad it's been an eye opener for him.
If this was a misapplication of the law then all that's called for is a slap on the wrist for the people who detained Miranda and an official apology. They might get some extra oversight out of it, but that's a stretch. Probably just a few internal memos so future actions don't raise such a stink.
The government doesn't comment on security matters. There is no recourse. End of discussion.
He's very much the type that might take this type of abuse as a combination of personal affront and horrible insult to the legal system, as well as worry that abuse of this law will reflect badly on him.
And he's not exactly best buddies with Theresa May.
Governing a country is a hard job and to expect ministers, whose briefs change every year or two, to do a good job is ridiculous. So they rely on the civil service, who have years of their careers based around governance over individual topics.
You can see this, for example, in the way that UK governments are almost always more authoritarian than oppositions. As soon as they become under the jurisdiction of the civil service, opinions change and the agenda of the previous 'government' is openly advanced regardless of what the new party said in opposition. Once you're actually in Whitehall, I could imagine that your world view changes as you become immersed in a very closed system. The current government came into power claiming to be wanting to repeal the liberty-removing legislation that the previous government imposed. And here they are a few years on, misusing that legislation, defending it and wanting to impose more of their 'own'.
However, it is also right that schedule 7 powers can only be used "for the purpose of determining" whether the detained person is a terrorist. The use of the power to detain and question someone who the examining officer knows is not a terrorist is plainly not for this purpose, so it would neither be within the spirit nor the letter of the law.
is factually incorrect I'm not sure the insinuation that this is less valuable because it is political point scoring is that valuable.