Terror suspects under surveillance get £650,000 in taxpayer handouts to pay for living expenses

Terror suspects placed under police surveillance have received more than £650,000 in living expenses including household bills and telephone costs, it emerged last night.

Twenty four suspects under control orders - given to those who are thought to be a grave danger to national security but cannot be prosecuted by the courts - have on average received £25,000, according to official figures.

Control orders can take a number of forms from curfews of 12 hours or more to near house arrest as well as the use of electronic tags and a ban on internet access.

Being watched: 24 suspects under police surveillance have on average received £120-a-week expenses to cover household bills and other costs since 2007

If suspects can claim that the terms of their order prevent them from getting a job, they are then entitled to receive handouts to cover their living costs, including rent, council tax, utility bills and telephone costs.

Home Office figures, obtained by the Conservatives, showed taxpayers have spent £656,500 on the living costs of terror suspects subject to control orders since 2005.

Conservatives say the sums spent were the equivalent of £120 per week for each of the 24 held under the controversial system.

The terror suspects qualify for free phone rental and calls, and have their gas, electric bills paid. They are also entitled to housing support and payments if they are refugees claiming asylum.

Separate figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the total cost to the Home Office of the control orders regime since April 2006 is £9.4million.

The figures were uncovered by the Conservatives who argue they bolster the argument for scrapping control orders and putting suspects on trial.

Shadow Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones said: 'Control orders deny due process to the defendant, do not provide a reliable remedy to the security problem posed by terrorist suspects, and on top of all that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

'A Conservative government would review the morally objectionable and costly control order regime with a view, consistent with the security situation, to replacing it by the trial of suspects through the normal court system.’

The figures were obtained through a freedom of information request.

In September Home Secretary Alan Johnson ordered a wholesale review of the control orders regime following a House of Lords ruling that anyone placed under an order without knowing the basis for it was being denied a fair hearing.

Two have so far been revoked as a result.

A Home Office spokesman defended control orders.
He said: 'The UK faces a real and serious threat from terrorism.
'We need to protect individual liberty whilst maintaining our nation's security. We must protect the most important of civil liberties - the right to life - whilst also protecting our other fundamental values.

'This is a challenge for any government but the UK Government has sought to find that balance at all times.

‘The protection of human rights is a key principle underpinning our counter-terrorism work at home and overseas.

'Terrorists are criminals who seek to undermine these rights and values.

'When dealing with suspected terrorists, prosecution is, and will continue to be, our preferred approach.

‘Where we cannot prosecute, and the individual concerned is a foreign national, we look to detain and then deport them.

'For those we cannot either prosecute or deport, control orders are the best available disruptive tool for managing the risk they pose.'

Some suspected terrorists are believed to have spent nearly four years on a control order.

The orders are given if evidence against suspects has, for example, been obtained using intercept techniques not admissible in court.

They are also served on international extremists who can't be deported on human rights grounds.