Peers inflicted a crushing defeat on the Government's anti-terrorism powers tonight by insisting that judges not ministers must wield them against terrorist suspects.

Lord Irving, the former Lord Chancellor and Tony Blair's former pupil master, broke ranks to join the rebellion against the measures in his first public act of defiance since leaving the Cabinet almost two years ago.

Adding weight to the rebellion was the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Condon, a crossbencher, who also voted against the Government.

The Lords voted by 249 to 119, a majority of 130, that a court must make the initial decision to impose any type of control order, not just the most severe form of house arrest.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has previously said that judges should authorise orders for house arrest, which would require derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights, but not lesser curbs like bans on internet use or mobile phones.

Faced with the likelihood of further defeats, the Government backed down and accepted without votes two further amendments whose effect was to add further legal safeguards to the procedure.

The first was to raise the burden of proof to be used from a test of reasonable suspicion, proposed by the Government, to one of the balance of probabilities as used in civil law.

The second was to require a statement from the Director of Public Prosecutions that there was no reasonable prospect of using the criminal law to achieve a successful prosecution of a terrorist suspect, instead of a control order.

The Prevention of Terrorism Bill, which Ministers are rushing through Parliament before current powers to detain foreign terror suspects without trial expire on Monday, returns to the Lords tomorrow for the second day of its committee stage when Tory peers will try to insert a sunset clause into the Bill.

It will return to the Commons on Wednesday, when the Government must decide whether to ask MPs to overturn the new safeguards, before a final showdown on Thursday when it will "ping-pong" between the Lords and Commons until one backs down.

The Home Office gave no indication after the vote of how it would react, but a spokesman said: "The Government continues to believe that the Bill as passed by the House of Commons strikes the right balance between protecting the security of the nation and safeguarding individual liberty."

Ministers were defeated by an alliance of rebel Labour peers, crossbenchers and former law lords, Tories and Liberal Democrats, whose peers tabled the amendments.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, the Tory peer and former Scottish Secretary, caught the mood of the two-hour debate by attacking attempts by the Government to draw a distinction between house arrest, which would require a judge's approval, and lesser control orders over which Ministers wanted to retain power.

A man who was banned from going to work and subjected to a curfew, even if this was short of house arrest, was effectively being deprived of his liberty, Lord Forsyth argued.

The public, whose consent was required for any such measures, would not understand the distinction even if one could be made in law, he said.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, disagreed saying most lesser forms of control order were likely to be in the form of requirements to report to a police station several times a week or not to associate with named people.

The Lord Chancellor argued against changing the burden of proof required, saying anti-terrorism powers were concerned not with punishment for past activities but assessing the risk of involvement in future acts of terrorism.

"The assessment must be carried out on the basis of a wide range of complex intelligence material and involve inferences and evaluations being made in relation to matters affecting national security," Lord Falconer argued.

But Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a former law lord he opposed control order altogether but accepted that, if they were to be introduced, they was no case for having a separate procedure for house arrest and lesser types of control order.

Lord Donaldson of Lymington, another former law lord, also opposed the saying: "It is unique in civil proceedings for the Secretary of State to be able to proceed on his own and without hearing the views of the person who is subject to the control order."Lord Waddington, a former Tory Home Secretary, said the Government was storing up trouble by trying to have to different sets of procedures.

Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, a human rights barrister and Labour peer, urged peers to defeat the Government by quoting Martin Luther King, and telling them to do what was right or what was popular.

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