Anti-terrorism control orders : a human rights analysis

This thesis explores the UK government’s use of anti-terrorism control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) 2005 between March 2005 and December 2011. Control orders, a form of preventive civil order, were used to impose a range of often stringent ‘obligations’ on individuals who were suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activity but who, for either legal or practical reasons, could not be prosecuted or deported. The study examines the central features of the PTA’s statutory scheme and provides a detailed analysis of the control order regime’s conformity, in principle and in practice, with the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998. In addition to critiquing the operation of the regime from a human rights perspective, a consequentialist analysis is employed in order to evaluate the practical efficacy of control orders as a mechanism for ‘protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism’. Following the change of government in 2010, control orders were replaced by the new, although in many ways similar, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs) under the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011. Whether the transition from control orders to TPIMs can, from a human rights and/or security point of view, be deemed a positive development is considered. In addition, the current and prospective future utility of TPIMs as a component of the United Kingdom’s legal response to the threat of terrorism is assessed.