HOWZAT

At the outset, Lord Phillips declared his membership of the human rights and law reform organisation Justice. The organisation has intervened in today’s appeal, to contend that the procedures for imposing control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act "fails to attain the core, irreducible, minimum entitlement to natural justice" under Article 6 of the human rights convention.

Government lawyers did not object to Lord Phillips hearing the case.

MB was stopped at Manchester Airport in March last year by the security services on suspicion of planning to travel to Iraq to fight against British and American soldiers. He was subjected to what amounted to house arrest, with additional restrictions on his liberty, including surrendering his passport, reporting daily to the police and allowing his home to be searched at any time.

Mr Justice Sullivan ruled the order was "incompatible" with Article 6 because MB had been denied the right to a proper hearing in a way which was "conspicuously unfair".

His second judgment, delivered last week, declared that control orders imposed on six Iraqis were so draconian as to amount to a deprivation of liberty which breached Article 5 of the Convention.

Control orders were created last year after the House of Lords held that detaining 12 foreign nationals without charge in Belmarsh high-security prison in south-east London was illegal. The men were held for more than three years without charge after being arrested in the months after the September 11 attacks.

The use of control orders to limit the movements of British terrorism suspects started after the July 7 bombings in London, and are currently served on 17 individuals. MB became the first British citizen to be placed under such an order in September last year.

Mr Justice Sullivan said he had had his passport taken from him and was forbidden to possess travel tickets or enter airports, train stations or ports. He had to report at a police station at the same time every day. Despite these restrictions, he had never been accused of a crime in court.

The judge said: "To say that the Act does not give the respondent in this case... ‘a fair hearing’ in the determination of his rights under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights would be an understatement."

Mr Burnett told the judges: "Parliament has crafted a very careful and elaborate statutory regime which passes muster for all purposes under the Convention."

The Government has reacted to the blow to its anti-terror provisions by warning that a "constitutional crisis" was emerging over the way the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the European Convention into domestic law, was being interpreted by the courts.

John Denham, chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, said some judgments were making it "difficult to protect the public" from the terrorist threat.

He argued that they failed to give sufficient weight to Parliament’s view of what was in the wider public interest.

Critics countered that High Court judges were performing their function of protecting civil liberties which were under threat from a "repressive" Government intent on riding roughshod over human rights.

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