Leading civil liberty campaigners tonight voiced fears that the reform of counter-terror laws to be detailed tomorrowwill amount to little more than "control orders lite".
David Davis, the former Conservative shadow home secretary, warned that a modified form of control order regime that did away with virtual house arrest, internal exile, and bans on the use of computers and mobile phones by terror suspects would be worthwhile but were no substitute for prosecution and judicial process.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said she was also expecting to be disappointed.
"The hallmark of control orders is punishment by the home secretary completely outside the normal system of justice," she said. "Liberty has argued for a clear mechanism to replace this legal limbo with criminal investigations and bail restrictions. We are not holding our breath."
After a six-month struggle within Whitehall and the coalition, the cabinet is believed to have agreed an "escalating series of measures" to replace control orders, which one Whitehall source said would mean "everybody will be able to save face."
Control orders are currently imposed on eight British terror suspects who cannot be prosecuted in the courts. It is expected that the reforms will include: ending virtual house arrest by limiting 16-hour curfews to an overnight residence order; an end to internal exile by scrapping relocation orders that force suspects to move to another city; and give them limited access to mobiles and the internet.
The new orders, possibly named restriction orders, will be accompanied by domestic and international travel restrictions. More funds are also expected to be made available for intensive surveillance of the very few high-risk terror suspects.
However, the prospects for bringing prosecutions against the terror suspects on control orders is unlikely to increase as the deadlock remains over the admissibility of intercept evidence.
Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers are likely to breathe a sigh of relief that an issue that threatened, in the words of the prime minister, to put the coalition on course for a car crash has been resolved around a compromise that squares both partners. The Lib Dems went into the election calling for control orders to be scrapped because they amount, in their current form, to a form of house arrest. The modified regime will allow them to say that is no longer the case.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, tonight left open the possibility of the opposition supporting the measures.
"We will look closely at the evidence which underpins new government proposals," she said. "These are exceptional powers and no government would use them in an ideal world."
Cooper said the question was whether there was a workable alternative to the current regime: "As a responsible party in opposition, our approach is clear: where changes are based on the evidence, and the advice of security experts, in our national interest, we will seek to be supportive."
The review is also expected to confirm the scrapping of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act allowing counter-terrorism police random stop and search powers and replacing it with a more targeted regime.
