£8m: cost of defending control orders in court

Pressure on Government mounts to ditch method of detaining terror suspects

Ministers have piled up an £8m bill in court costs from defending the controversial system of control orders for terror suspects.

The disclosure of the legal battles' continuing drain on the public purse intensified calls for the Government to scrap the detention regime. Twelve suspects remain under house arrest after the Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, yesterday defied court demands to abandon it.

He authorised their continuing use and insisted that control orders, which can include staying indoors for 16 hours a day and daily reporting to police, were a valuable weapon in the fight against terrorism. The court costs from the Home Office's legal challenges are set to rise further, it emerged yesterday. The department admitted it had spent a "significant sum of money" but insisted it was trying to "minimise the costs".

Last night the human rights organisation Amnesty International demanded the abolition of the regime.

Tim Hancock, its UK campaigns director, said: "It's hardly surprising control orders have been the subject of expensive, drawn-out legal challenges. When people have their liberty restricted on the basis of secret intelligence, of course they are going to challenge this unfair decision in the courts."

In a fresh blow to the Home Office, the Labour-controlled Commons Home Affairs Select Committee also called for controls orders to be scrapped. They were "no longer an effective response" to the terror threat and their legality was in "serious doubt", the committee concluded in a report to be published today.

The MPs added: "It is fundamentally wrong to deprive individuals of their liberty without revealing why."

The House of Lords last year insisted terror suspects whose liberty is curtailed should be able to see an "irreducible minimum" of the intelligence used against them, and last month the High Court opened the way for damages claims by detainees on human rights grounds.

Ministers immediately made clear that they would fight the ruling and Mr Johnson yesterday laid a parliamentary order to renew the control order regime for another 12 months.

He said the measure struck "the right balance between protecting the public and safeguarding the rights of the individual", insisting: "Control orders remain an important tool to deal with a small number of suspected terrorists who cannot be prosecuted or deported."

He was supported by Lord Carlile of Berriew, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, who said abandoning them would have a "damaging effect on national security", and that the system was necessary for a small number of cases where it was not realistic to use the courts.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "It is astonishing the Government remains so committed to control orders when they have taken such a beating in the courts."

In its report, the home affairs select committee warned that civil servants leading the fight against terrorism could be putting the public at risk through complacency. The MPs said they were worried that a "degree of institutional inertia has set in", with Whitehall slow to take the initiative in meeting "ever-changing threats".