Downing Street Says » Control Orders

» Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Control Orders

Asked if there was any new thinking on control orders, the PMOS said that this was not where we wanted to be, and we had had to introduce control orders because of the court judgement. The Court of Appeal had forced us to weaken the obligations that the Secretary of State could impose, and we were at the moment currently appealing to the House of Lords to overturn the Court of Appeal’s judgement. Therefore, we would see what would happen on that. What people should not be under doubt about, however, was that we wanted strong powers from the beginning. It was a combination of Parliament, and the courts that prevented us from gaining those powers.

Put that that did not stop the control orders being operated effectively, the PMOS said what the courts had done was to place restrictions on how we could use the control orders, and how restricted they could be. Therefore, if restrictions were imposed on how restrictive control orders could be, it did have follow-through consequences.

Put that it sounded like the courts were being blamed, the PMOS said that he could not get involved in an individual case because of the anonymity rule. However, in terms of the overall powers, they were not as restrictive as we wanted them to be because of the court judgement. That was a simple fact.

Asked if the on-the-run people were criminals now, the PMOS said that the anonymity rule was imposed by the court, and therefore could only be lifted by the court. The police could, if they believed it was for a compelling operational reason, ask the Home Secretary to seek to overturn the anonymity order. We had received no such request at present.

Asked if we would be happy if the on-the-run people were caught, they would be prosecuted for a criminal offence of disobeying a control order, the PMOS replied that it was not for him to speculate about what would happen in that sort of situation. That would be a matter for the proper authorities to make the right judgement at the right time.

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