London MP Diane Abbott issued a statement today backing the UK Law Lords’ ruling that the use of secret evidence to justify control orders breaches human rights law.

“Until earlier this year I did not realise it was possible to detain people, place them under control orders or under deportation orders, purely on the basis of evidence they had never heard," she said.

"Since then I have spoken to lawyers representing these men – some of them British citizens – and have been absolutely appalled by what I have heard. We have allowed ourselves to get into a situation where an individual can be taken from their house, moved hundreds of miles away and kept under a control order where they cannot leave the house for 16 hours of the day when they have never had the chance to hear the evidence against them or defend themselves in an open court. It is a shameful practice that obliterates Habeas Corpus. It is my hope that the Government will take today’s ruling very seriously and get moving with alterations to the terror laws that are a 700 year regression.”