The Home Office today issued a paper explaining how monitoring private telephone calls, e-mail and internet use has helped police to trap suspected terrorists and criminals.

The research was published to back up Britain's calls for new EU laws requiring telecoms companies to keep such data for at least a year. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, was in Strasbourg today in an attempt to win over sceptical MEPs.

After the London bombs on July 7, the European Commission agreed to speed up plans for common rules on the use of data. EU justice and interior ministers are due to discuss the proposals again tomorrow when they meet in Newcastle.

But the strategy has drawn criticism from MEPs and the European telecoms industry. In response, the Home Office study cited examples of where stored telephone calls, email and Internet use had proved essential in crime investigations.

"In at least one case in the UK, the ability of police and intelligence agencies to identify a terrorist network ... has depended on access to retained telecommunications data which revealed links between individuals otherwise invisible to investigators," the policy paper said.

MEPs complain that holding on to e-mail and phone data will breach privacy and human rights, and have accused the European Commission of intending to ram the proposals through without consulting the European Parliamant.

Meanwhile the telecoms industry is concerned about costs, which in some EU countries could be hundreds of millions of euros. But the Home Office paper says that co-operation between British police and phone operators was relatively cheap, and that governments could pay some of the price for storing the data.

Britain has struck a deal with a national mobile phone operator and is paying the firm €1.2 million ($1.50 million) for holding data for a year, the paper said.

"Our police can and do pay for communications data," it said."In a typical murder case they may spend approximately... €72,400 on communications data, this rises to approximately... €724,000 for a terrorist investigation."

The paper also cited a Swedish case where logs of internet use helped to track down an individual who e-mailed a threat to bomb Stockholm’s central train station to Swedish police. The source of the e-mail was traced to a public library in Stockholm where staff provided information that led to the arrest, it said.

Britain and other EU states want telecoms firms not only to log completed phone calls but also calls when the line is busy or there is no answer. The policy paper said such data had helped clear a man as a suspect in a murder investigation.

In some EU states, telecoms firms charge customers for both type of calls. German companies do not and they argue such requirements could cost millions of euros to implement.

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