Abu Qatada Photo: REUTERS

Twenty four suspects placed on control orders have on average received £25,000 each to spend on accommodation, council tax, utility bills and telephone costs, including phone cards, according to official figures.

Since April 2007, the Home Office has spent £611,470 on “living costs” for people put under effective house arrest on the advice of MI5. In addition, the Government is also paying some of the suspects undisclosed sums in benefits.

There are currently 13 suspected terrorists under control orders. Their movements and actions are restricted because the security services believe that they pose a threat to public safety.

They cannot be kept in prison because judges have ruled it would breach their human rights. However, they cannot be put on trial because the security services believe the information that would be used to prosecute them is too sensitive to disclose in court. Instead they are ordered to stay at home, under regular supervision.

Because it is impractical for them to find work, the taxpayer has to pick up the bill for some living costs.

One suspect received more than £9,000 in a single year, consisting of £7,744 towards his accommodation, £891 for utilities, £429 for council tax and £88 towards phone line rental.

The figures — published last week in Parliament — were uncovered by the Conservatives, who said that they strengthened the case for scrapping control orders and putting suspects on trial.

The control order regime has been frequently criticised, and Baroness Neville-Jones, the Conservative shadow homeland security secretary said that the costs associated with the orders were another reason to abolish them. She said: “Control orders deny due process to the defendant, do not provide a reliable remedy to the security problem posed by terrorist suspects, and on top of all that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“A Conservative government would review the morally objectionable and costly control order regime with a view . . . to replacing it by the trial of suspects through the normal court system,” she added.

Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the Commons sub-committee on counter-terrorism, criticised the sums paid to the suspects. “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn we had been renting DVDs for them as well,” he said.

Calling for a fundamental change in the treatment of terrorist suspects, he added: “The control order regime is not only impractical, it is also very expensive. We need measures to get these people into court – intercept evidence, plea bargaining, questioning after charge.

“That would allow us to divest ourselves of these detainees and the huge cost of detaining them.”

Control orders date back to 2005, when the Law Lords ruled that ministers could not legally hold terrorist suspects without trial in Belmarsh prison in London. People subject to control orders legally cannot be identified, but are alleged by the security services to be terrorists who would pose a direct threat to national security if they were allowed to remain at large.

Since 2005 a total of 44 people have been the subject of such orders. Of those, 24 have received money for their living expenses.

One man previously put under a control order is Abu Qatada, a Muslim cleric whose sermons were said to have inspired Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 hijackers.

Separate figures released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the total cost to the Home Office of the control orders regime since April 2006 is £9.4 million. Since 2007, £180,000 has been paid to private security companies contracted to carry out “electronic monitoring” of the suspects. The Home Office figures do not include welfare payments. The Department for Work and Pensions said earlier this year that nine suspects were receiving some sort of welfare payments. Seven were receiving job seeker’s allowance.

As well as criticism about the civil liberties implications of control orders, the government has faced charges of being ineffective at controlling suspects. Despite being under regular surveillance by the security forces, at least seven suspects have absconded. Some are thought to have fled the country. Some people who have been subject to orders are said to be extremist preachers who do not directly participate in terrorism but encourage others to do so.

The Home Office defended the continued use of control orders and the associated costs. A spokesman said: “When dealing with suspected terrorists, prosecution is, and will continue to be, our preferred approach.

“Where we cannot prosecute, and the individual concerned is a foreign national, we look to detain and then deport them.

“For those we cannot either prosecute or deport, control orders are the best available disruptive tool for managing the risk they pose.”

• Counter-terrorism police have arrested five men, including a Muslim preacher, after raids on a network allegedly sending young men to receive terrorist training abroad. Raids in Manchester and Bolton coincided with the arrest of a 26-year-old man at a hotel near Heathrow airport. Sources were unable to confirm suggestions that he was planning to travel to Pakistan or Afghanistan.