THE Conservatives vowed last night to ensure that controversial anti-terrorism “control orders” would become law next week as former judges attacked the Government’s plans in the House of Lords.

Senior Tories insisted that, although they disagreed with much of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, they were determined not to be painted as soft on terror by Labour in the election run-up.

The Tories described control orders issued by judges rather than the Home Secretary as the “lesser of two evils” as the Government dug in and said that judges would be asked to issue only the most serious orders for effective house arrest.

But ministers came under attack on another front yesterday when former judges declared in the Lords that any control order issued by a judge would undermine their independence.

Lord Ackner, a former law lord, said: “There is a growing apprehension among the judiciary as to exactly what they are being asked to do. It looks like they are being dragged into the political scene by being asked to rubber-stamp a procedure that is alien to their function.”

Lord Donaldson of Lymington, a former Master of the Rolls, called for a third way to be found where neither the Home Secretary nor judges were directly seen to make a control order.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick added: “I accept that it looks better for a judge to make this sort of order, but that is a purely cosmetic point. It would put judges into a very awkward and very exposed position. In my view that is something we should not do and it is our duty in this House to make sure that judges are not exposed to a sort of political backlash, as they would be if these orders were made by judges in the first place.”

Lord Lloyd said judges had never before been asked to do this and had never deprived anybody of their liberty without the prior verdict of a jury.

The Government was called upon from all sides of the House to make the issuing of all control orders consistent, rather than the compromise put together to win over Labour rebels that the most serious orders are made by a judge while the Home Secretary can issue lesser orders on curfews and phone bans.

Lord Thomas of Gresford, for the Lib Dems, said that under the Government’s proposals everyone in Britain would be at risk. “The more I have listened to this debate, the more I have concluded that we must have a common procedure on control orders. The Home Secretary must go to the court and the court should follow the procedures which we will seek to add to the Bill. Having a judge decide things is useless unless there is a proper due process.”

But Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, defended the compromise. “Having looked at this matter fully and taken the advice of the security services, we think the right level of powers we need are those set out in this Bill.

“The people who have looked at the situation — the security services — have accepted the need for something other than the normal criminal processes. We are trying to craft the fairest, least intrusive process that provides the necessary protection,” he told peers.

Lord Kingsland, the Shadow Lord Chancellor, said: “We do not like what the Government has done from first to last but we have given an undertaking as an Opposition to do what the Government asked us to do, which was to get this Bill through by Tuesday. We are committed to doing that.”

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