It will be interesting to see how the anti-terror bill goes today.

Last week we had a constituency meeting and our MP had asked for the opinion of the party on the proposed 90-day limit, and whether we thought some sort of compromise was more appropriate. The opinion of the meeting was about 60:40 in favour of keeping the status quo. Of those who were in favour of increasing the time limit some were only prepared to accept an increase to 28 days, some would be happy with the full 90 days at least and some were in favour of various points in-between.

This does not mean, of course, that we will necessarily expect our MP to vote that way – although I would be happy if she did, as I personally feel that 14 days is enough. Some members of the party feel that, when the constituency party decides unequivocally on a specific issue she should vote that way, but there are a couple of things to bear in mind.

• The vote was not of the whole party or even of all the delegates to the GC: just of those who turned up that day. It was not a formal motion which was listed in the agenda so there could be members and delegates with strong opinions one way or the other who might have turned up if they knew it was being debated.

• MPs, like any elected representative, are in the tricky situation of representing not just their party members, or even their voters, but the whole electorate – even those who didn’t vote or voted against them. You would hope that any MP, councillor, MEP, MSP or whatever will broadly follow their party’s manifesto and whip as that is what people expected when they voted for them, but given the impracticalities of canvassing the entire population all the time you have to expect them to use their judgement of what their constituents want, and sometimes what is best for them even if it is not what they want.

• We do not govern by referendum. If everyone is to be consulted on every issue, we do not need elected representatives and could save money by doing away with them.

• There were some sarcastic comments about the party not being consulted like this before. This was mostly from borough and county councillors not known for having ever asked the party (or even the whip) how they should vote in the council

The whole question is a lot more than just theoretical for Crawley. Last year we had a number of residents arrested for suspected terrorism, who were held without charge and subsequently released.