Control Orders — Annual renewal 2006 — Regrets the inadiquate safeguards — rejected — 15 Feb 2006 at 21:07

Those who were Not-Content implied that they agreed that sections 1 to 9 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 should continue to be in force for a further year, beginning 11 March 2006.

These sections of the Act outline how the Secretary of State can make "control orders" (widely viewed as a form of house arrest) against anyone "for purposes [of] protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism." This legislation was rushed through the House during a mammoth 30 hour session on 10 March 2005 to cover the fact that a previous terrorism act, which allowed the Secretary of State to detain foreign terrorist suspects without trial indefinitely, was unconstitutional.

For this debate in the House of Lords, the Government was following Section 13 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 with the Secretary of State laying down an order to be approved by a resolution of the House:

Lord Bassam of Brighton rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 2 February be approved.

The actual vote here was rejecting an amendment to this motion:

Lord Thomas of Gresford rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert, "but this House regrets that the safeguards against misuse of the powers conferred by the Act are inadequate given the need for compliance with the obligations of the Human Rights Act 1998".

The House of Commons, meanwhile, approved the order that the power of the Act should continue in a debate without a vote.

This particular process is known as a "weak sunset clause", and was inserted into the Bill on 9 March 2005 against the wishes of the Lords who prefered a "strong sunset clause", one which would require that primary legislation be enacted to extend its powers, not just a Statutory Order as we see here. It was hotly debated at the time that the Bill was being passed, but appears to have lost the interest of those who supported the idea of a strong sunset clause in the meantime.

Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (Not-Content)Minority (Content)Turnout
Con0 31.4%
Crossbench2 53.8%
Lab76 (+2 tell) 137.3%
LDem0 23 (+2 tell)33.8%
Total:78 3216.8%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

Lords for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible lord who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Party | Vote

NamePartyVote
Baroness Masham of IltonCrossbench (front bench)no
Lord Walpole Crossbench (front bench)no
Baroness Kennedy of The ShawsLabaye

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