The lack of any effective check or court oversight of the home secretary’s new powers to impose temporary exclusion orders for up to two years on British citizens returning from Iraq or Syria has been strongly criticised by the official counter-terror law watchdog.

“My central concern is where are the courts in all this?” David Anderson QC has told MPs. He said the proposed orders, the centrepiece of the new anti-terrorism and security bill being published on Wednesday,– had been scaled back since David Cameron stressed in September that they would be used to prevent suspects returning to Britain despite their holding UK passports.

It is believed that pressure from the Liberal Democrats and the Home Office has watered down the power to ensure that it is more about the “managed return” following concerns about leaving people stateless.

Anderson also raised concerns about plans to give ministers the power to ban extremist speakers from universities and to introduce compulsory deradicalisation programmes for those believed to be at risk of being drawn into extremism and terrorism.

The bill, to be published by the home secretary, Theresa May, will also require internet service providers to retain data on their subscribers and their use of smartphones, laptops and other devices to ensure that online activity can be linked to a specific individual.

It will also contain measures to seize for 30 days the passports of suspects leaving the country and on the payment of ransoms to terrorist organisations. Anderson said suspects would be presented with a temporary exclusion order when they checked in for their return flight to Britain. They would be told that they could only get only the flight if they agreed to be interviewed by the police upon arrival and provide a permanent address in the UK.

Anderson told parliament’s joint human rights committee that the nature of the proposal had changed. “It is not a power to prevent people returning. It is a power to require people to attend a meeting with the police,” he said.

Anderson said that unlike the terrorism prevention and investigation measures (TPIMS), there appeared to be no provision for the courts to scrutinise the decision to issue a temporary exclusion order or to ensure disclosure of the evidence on which it was based.

He said that judicial review was a possibility, but in practice very difficult for somebody excluded from the country.

Anderson said he had not seen the details of the plans to give ministers the power to issue a direction to universities and colleges who fail to exclude extremist speakers from campuses, but that at first sight it appeared to raise immediate issues of academic freedom.

He also voiced strong concern that plans to introduce compulsory deradicalisation programmes should include safeguards to ensure individuals do not incriminate themselves and face criminal prosecution as a result of disclosures they make during the process.