BRITAIN’s terrorism watchdog gave a warning yesterday that there was a “real and present danger” of more suicide bomb attacks.

But he expressed concern about the indefinite imposition of detention orders amounting almost to house arrest on nine suspects awaiting deportation to north African states.

Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC, defended the use of control orders but urged the police to make greater efforts to bring prosecutions against foreign terror suspects who are subject to them.

His first report on the operation of the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act was published as Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told MPs that plans for a single counter-terror Act had been put back to next year. Work was continuing on a new definition of terrorism and on whether to allow phone-tap evidence to be used in court.

Lord Carlile said that documents the Home Office had shown him were “sufficiently alarming for me to reemphasise . . . the real and present danger of shocking terrorism acts involving suicide bombers”.

On the detention of terror suspects pending the signing of “no torture” deals with North African states such as Algeria, Lord Carlile said that the Home Office should have secured the agreements — known as memoranda of understanding — before imposing control orders on the men, who include Abu Qatada, the radical Muslim preacher. He said: “How long the present situation for those persons can continue may be a matter for the courts to determine.” It would be unacceptable for the control orders to be imposed on people for years on end.

Deals have been made with Jordan, Libya and Lebanon but not Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. Most of those being held are Algerians.

Lord Carlile urged police to do more to prosecute suspects rather than keeping them in limbo in their homes or jails. Under the control orders, suspects can be denied access to phones and the internet and allowed to meet only selected people. The orders are used where there is not enough evidence for a criminal trial and the indvidual cannot be deported because of fears that he or she would be subject to torture or inhumane treatment.

But Lord Carlile said: “Information about international contacts, financial support for insurgents in Iraq and the use of guarded language to refer to potential terrorism targets might be progressed to evidence of significant terrorism crime.”

He added: “I would have reached the same decision as the Secretary of State in each case in which a control order has been made. He asks questions and certainly does not act as a mere cipher when the papers are placed before him.”

However, this did not mean that Mr Clarke was correct in every single case.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, welcomed the plan to rationalise laws, adding: “Much of the anti-terrorist legislation was put together in haste and has proved either unusable or unnecessary.”

ON ALERT

• The Joint Terrorist Analyst Centre (JTAC), made up of agencies including MI5, M16, police and security services, decides how urgent a terror alert is
  
  
• The levels are:
  6) Negligible
  5) Low
  4) Moderate
  3) Significant
  2) High
  1) Imminent

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