Hoon defends plans for 'Big Brother' database

Plans to create a giant database of mobile phone and internet records were defended last night by the Transport Secretary, Geoff Hoon, who said critics of the scheme were "giving a licence to terrorists to kill".

Speaking on the BBC's Question Time programme, Mr Hoon admitted he was prepared to go "quite a long way" in undermining civil liberties to stop people being killed, and added "the biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a terrorist".

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Details of the "Big Brother"-style database were revealed in The Independent on Wednesday, after the Government's own terrorism watchdog condemned the idea. The plans have been branded "Orwellian" by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories have called on ministers to justify the proposals.

Mr Hoon insisted the Government merely aimed to extend powers that already exist for ordinary telephone calls to cover data and information relayed over the internet. "If [terrorists] are going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don't have the power to deal with that, then you are giving a licence to terrorists to kill people," he said.

Details of people's mobile phone calls, the websites they visit and the emails they send are already stored by telecoms companies for a year. But under the proposals, the Government will take control of the process.