LONDON—The government is to offer wavering Labour MPs a last-minute concession over the issue of pre-charge detention in an attempt to stave off a Commons defeat that could cause potentially irreparable damage to Gordon Brown.
Terrorist suspects held for more than the current limit of 28 days but not subsequently charged could receive 3,000 pounds for each extra day in custody, the BBC said.
Up to 30 Labour MPs are expected to join opposition parties in voting against the planned extension to 42 days on Wednesday evening.
The government says it may need to hold terrorist suspects without charge for that long in particularly complex cases but opponents of the plan say it is a gross infringement of civil liberties.
No other country, they point out, feels the need to hold suspects for anything like as long without charge.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the vote was one of principle as well as practical police pressures.
"I said to the Home Secretary at least three times ... 'show me the evidence' and I'm afraid we were never shown the evidence," he told the BBC.
Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said he expected the vote to be "very tight", but thought the government would win.
"With the concessions, people should be able to move and come across to us," he told the BBC.
"I may be the only optimist in the House but I think common sense will prevail and this important part of the bill will pass."
The vote is so close that Foreign Secretary David Miliband was ordered to scrap planned meetings with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem on Tuesday and return to London.
The nine MPs of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party -- who say they are inclined to support the government -- could become crucial, although newspapers reported that some individual opposition members plan to vote with Labour.
Brown's poll ratings are at an all-time low after the loss of the formerly safe Crewe and Nantwich seat and a drubbing in local elections.
Defeat in the security vote would erode the prime minister's authority still further and, analysts say, would be bound to fuel talk among Labour MPs of replacing him as Labour leader before the next general election due by 2010.
Attempts by his predecessor Tony Blair to extend detention without charge to 90 days in 2005 ended in his first Commons defeat as prime minister.
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