The Home Secretary rounded on the committee and issued a warning that their proposal would leave the country at greater risk of attack by al-Qaeda terrorists. Within minutes of the committee publishing a review of the operation of draconian emergency laws passed after September 11, Mr Blunkett dismissed its key recommendation.

He said he would be “failing in my duty” to protect the public if he abandoned the internment powers for foreign nationals suspect of terrorism.

“I am not convinced that the current threat leaves us with any option but to continue to use these powers,” he said. “I believe that I would be failing in my duty of public protection if the Part 4 powers were removed from the armoury of measures available to protect the United Kingdom from specific terrorist threats.”

The Home Secretary also dismissed another proposal from the committee which said that foreign terror suspects could be tagged rather than detained. “I fail to see how the public would be adequately protected by electronic tagging, ” he said.

Members of the committee were surprised at the speed and tone of Mr Blunkett’s reaction to their 121-page report. They had expected what was described as a more “measured response” in January.

But the forthright demand for an end to internment without trial for foreign national terror suspects, could lead to a rebellion by Labour MPs and in the House of Lords when the committee’s findings are debated in February.

The committee of Privy Councillors called for the abolition of the power to allow the indefinite detention without charge or trial of foreign nationals who cannot be deported. It said the internment of foreign nationals should end as “matter of urgency” because it increased the risk of a miscarriage of justice.

The report also said that the current powers “do not meet the full extent of the threat” facing the UK as they only applied to foreign nationalis.

It also disclosed that “nearly half” of international terror suspects in whom the security services and police are interested are British nationals.

Lord Newton of Braintree, a former Conservative Cabinet Minister, criticised officials for failing to find alternative way of dealing with 17 foreign nationals who have been certified as international terror suspects. Two have voluntarily left the country, and 14 are in jail and one in hospital.

The measures, which were widely criticised by human rights campaigners, are contained in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.

The committee’s report said: “We consider the shortcomings . . . to be sufficiently serious to strongly recommend that the Part 4 powers which allow foreign nationals to be detained potentially indefinitely should be replaced as a matter of urgency.”

The committee’s alternatives to internment included removing the “self-imposed blanket ban” on phone tapping evidence in court, in a bid to increase prosecutions.

It also recommended that instead of indefinite detention suspects could be monitored through electronic tagging and only being allowed to use certain telephones and banks.

They also said that it was unsatisfactory that the law allowed detainees to leave Britain at any time which amounted to “ exporting terrorism”.

The attack on a key element in the anti terror law comes as foreign governments are also criticising the Government. Their complaint is that they have been given no access to the detainees. Investigators from Spain, Germany and Italy are desperate to question Abu Qatada, who they claim is a pivotal figure in cells they have under arrest in their own countries.

Their requests to question him and some of the other suspects directly have been rejected by the Government. Investigators in Spain who named Abu Qatada as “the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in Europe”, say their own terror trials are hindered by Britain's refusal to let them interrogate the cleric. The Jordanian Government has sentenced him to life imprisonment for his role in planning a bombing campaign to coincide with the the millenium celebrations and cannot understand why Abu Qatada is not extradited. In spite of holding most of the terror suspects for many months, the men are providing the security services and police with little intelligence on terrorist activity in the United Kingdom.

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