The Government’s attempt to restrict the movements of terror suspects through “control-lite” orders suffered another setback at the High Court yesterday.

The new orders are an attempt by the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to maintain the beleaguered control order system after they were condemned in July by the House of Lords.

The system came under fire because it relies on the use of “secret evidence” to restrict the freedom of suspects who cannot be prosecuted for reasons of national security.

Ministers recently sought a way around the problem by introducing the concept of orders imposing lighter, more limited obligations on controlees that they said did not require them to disclose further evidence.

However, yesterday Mr Justice Collins, sitting in London, rejected the Government argument in the cases of two men, BC and BB. He ruled that both must be told enough to enable them to meet the allegations against them.

There was “an irreducible minimum” of information that had to be provided even in the case of light control orders. “The approach to disclosure is the same for any control order,” the judge said.

He granted the Home Secretary permission to appeal against his ruling.

Control orders were first introduced under anti-terrorism legislation in 2005.

In July this year, the system began to unravel when the House of Lords gave a landmark ruling in the case of AF.

The law lords declared that AF and other terrorism suspects were entitled under human rights laws to the disclosure of sufficient material to enable them to instruct legal representatives to answer effectively the case against them.

The ruling left the Government with a dilemma over whether to provide more material to controlees at the risk — it was claimed — of compromising intelligence sources, or abandoning control orders altogether.

Government lawyers argued that the AF ruling did not apply to the new orders because they imposed only limited restrictions on controlees, and had only an “incidental effect” on their rights.

It was contended the orders were “light enough” so that Article 6 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights did not apply to them, and no further disclosure of material to controlees was required.

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