The BBC has completely missed the point in its report of the government's new Prevention of Terrorism Bill. The bill does not bring in 'house arrest' after all. On the contrary, the control orders that it does bring in do not involve the deprivation of liberty, which is what house arrest means. To deprive terror suspects of their liberty, the bill provides instead for the government to require Parliament to give its approval to derogate from human rights law. In other words, a completely fresh legislative process would be required if the government should want, at some point in the future, to confine a suspect to his house.

This means that the Belmarsh detainees, who the Law Lords said must not be locked up in prison without trial, will not be confined to their houses either. The implications of this are startling. For it means that terror suspects, who the Home Office has until now vigorously argued posed such a threat to the life of the nation that they had to be locked up without trial, will now be given their liberty -- subject to various lesser restrictions. So if they are now deemed not dangerous enough to be locked up in their houses, why were they said to be so dangerous that they had to be locked up in prison indefinitely, until the Law Lords threw their human rights spanner in the works?

The government's answer is that, until this bill, the only reason the Belmarsh detainees were put in prison was that at that time the alternative to prison was complete freedom. Now, the government says, it is equipping itself with a range of intermediate restrictions which -- mirabile dictu -- the security service says will be perfectly adequate to deal with the level of threat these people pose.

What a load of utter bilge. The inescapable fact is that if these Belmarsh detainees are as dangerous as the Home Office always said they were, they should be locked up, period. Either they were not so dangerous after all; in which case the government and security services are utterly incompetent. Or they are; in which case the government has effectively caved in to the Law Lords and the 'human rights' industry and left this country unprotected.

For my money, the latter is the case. All the stuff about 'concessions' to do with judicial oversight of tough procedures to protect this country is a smokescreen. Charles Clarke may initially have roared, but he has brought forth a mouse. What a shambles.