(Breaking) New British Counter-Terrorism Laws

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26 January 2011 Last updated at 13:29

Theresa May: Control orders to be scrapped
An armed officer The counter-terrorism review was launched by the Home Office in July 2010
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New measures to replace control orders have been revealed by the home secretary after a review of counter-terrorism powers.

It comes after the man who headed the review, Lord Macdonald, said the UK had over-reacted to 9/11 and 7/7.

The control order regime should now be scrapped by the end of the year and replaced with T-Pims (Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures).

Critics have said the new system is little more than "control orders lite".
Home secretary's permission

In addition, as part of the counter-terrorism review, the limit of pre-charge detention will be cut from 28 to 14 days.

Outlining the plans to Parliament, Home Secretary Theresa May said the new regime would "better focused".

As with control orders now, T-Pims will require the home secretary's permission with reviews by the High Court.

The measures will be limited to two years, but will be able to be extended if there is new material that the individual still poses a threat.

They will also require overnight residence of eight to 10 hours, which will be verified by an electronic tag.

Currently curfews can last for up to 16 hours.

The home secretary said this would be more flexible than a curfew and a controlee could stay away from their home address with permission.

Some measures will stay, such as a ban on overseas travel, the requirement to regularly report to the police and a breach of these conditions leading to a maximum five-year jail term

There will be limited restrictions on communications including the use of the internet, but controlees will be able to use it at home as long as they notify authorities of their password.

According to the Home Office these measures are not as restrictive as now.

In his report overseeing the counter-terrorism review, the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, said he supported most of the recommendations.

However, he was critical of the replacement measures for control orders.

"It may be appropriate and proportionate to mandate overnight stays at a notified address," he said.

"But a tag is of limited use here, in the absence of curfew, and neither tags nor curfews are commonly used in criminal cases where residence requirements are in place: generally the police rely on spot visits and intelligence to enforce the requirement.

"In the circumstances I would regard the use of curfews and tags in this context to be disproportionate, unnecessary and objectionable. They would serve no useful purpose."

Lord Macdonald told the BBC ahead of the announcement that "traditional ideals" had been sacrificed in the push against terrorism, and a balance had to be drawn between security and freedom.

He said there had been an element of over-reaction, meaning British institutions became a "symbol of hypocrisy" around the world.

"I think there's a wide feeling about that across political parties - across political ideologies - and this review has been an attempt to redress that.

"It's always been of critical importance that we don't, in trying to respond to these threats, give up the things that the terrorists would like to take from us.

"In other words we don't want to give up the battle without a shot being fired. We want to protect our constitution, we need to protect our way of life, and we need to get this balance right, and I think that is what the review has been trying to achieve."
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image of Norman Smith Norman Smith Chief political correspondent, BBC Radio 4

The new control order regime may look and sound remarkably like the old control order regime.

And yet - in presentational terms - there's probably enough for Mr Clegg to sell the policy to his party.

In particular he will be able to argue the "house arrest" element of control orders under which terror suspects could face curfews of up to 16 hours a day is to go.

This is crucial as it was this element of control orders which the Lib Dems specifically promised to scrap in their manifesto.

And yet Lib Dems sources openly concede the new regime will disappoint some of their supporters and human rights groups like Liberty.

The suspicion is that in government Mr Clegg has had access to security briefings which have made him much more cautious about dismantling the control order regime.

In short, he and other Lib Dems are having to come to terms with the difference between opposition and government.

The Home Office launched the review in July 2010, saying it would be rapid and would be aimed at reconciling counter-terrorism powers with civil liberties.

The parties agreed to scrap the power of police to hold a suspect without charge for 28 days - and the time limit has now reverted to the original 14 days, after ministers decided not to renew the legislation this month.

However, the coalition has struggled to reach a deal on the future of control orders - the controversial powers to restrict the movement of a small number of suspects who the government says cannot be prosecuted or, where they are foreign nationals, deported.

Security chiefs say the power is an essential tool in cases where there is intelligence that someone is involved in extremism but has not yet committed a crime, such as someone associating with known plotters.

The coalition ministers appear to have reached a deal to scrap control orders - but leaks in recent weeks have led critics to say the new system is little more than "control orders lite".

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said the government had "bottled it".

"Spin and semantics aside, control orders are retained and rebranded, if in a slightly lower-fat form," she said.

"As before, the innocent may be punished without a fair hearing and the guilty will escape the full force of criminal law."

The legislation is being debated in the House of Commons as I type this. For the time being though, I never thought I'd say this, but good on the Tories!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Someone actually kept an election promise and rolled back a loss of civil liberty in the anglosphere? Jesus christ, that really IS news, considering under all recent elections I can recall, things have simply gotten worse the moment someone was elected promising to make them better. And I am not being sarcastic. Yes, they've done good.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

It's not the first time the Coalition has done something to roll back a loss of civil liberty, either; they scrapped mandatory ID cards and a bunch of huge, expensive biometric databases as well. Of course, those were all high profile and extremely unpopular, so it didn't exactly cost a lot of political capital to get rid of them. If anything, they probably gained from doing so. This, on the other hand, is the sort of thing that gets critics wailing about how the terrorists are going to kill us all, so it actually takes a bit of effort.