A fresh coalition row has broken out after Nick Clegg told the home secretary, Theresa May, that she will face a parliamentary defeat on the government’s counter-terrorism bill unless judges are given oversight of plans to impose temporary exclusion orders on some terrorist suspects returning to Britain.

As MPs prepare to debate the counter-terrorism and security bill at its penultimate commons stage on Tuesday, the deputy prime minister has told the Home Office that the measure will have to be amended in the House of Lords to avoid a government defeat.

Clegg is calling on the home secretary to introduce government amendments in the upper house to meet the concerns of David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, about the lack of judicial checks on temporary exclusion orders.



Anderson said the orders, which can last for up to two years, needed to be subject to judicial oversight because the home secretary could no have the final word. “If you are going to restrict people’s liberties in this way – much as we all trust home secretaries you simply cannot give them the final word,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

“The people we are talking about are our citizens, like it or not. That gives us some responsibility, I would say a primary responsibility, for dealing with them. Turkey or France can always deport the person back to the UK and there is no possibility of objecting to that. Nothing in this bill alters that.



“But there certainly are difficulties. If somebody does choose to stay over there what are they supposed to do? … With some countries you would have to look out – is the person at risk of being tortured? What are the guarantees against that sort of thing happening?”

A source close to Clegg said: “The Liberal Democrats have always sought to follow David Anderson’s advice. He is quite clear on the need for judicial oversight in this area. That is why we are seeking government amendments to be brought forward in the House of Lords on the oversight of temporary exclusion orders.”

The Lib Dems are not planning to support Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, when she seeks to amend the bill at its report stage in the House of Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday. Cooper is hoping to win the support of Tory rebels, including David Davis and Dominic Raab, for what she described in the Independent on Sunday as “additional judicial safeguards”. The Lib Dems, who take issue with the substance of some of Cooper’s proposals, would risk the collapse of the coalition if they backed an opposition amendment to a government bill.

Clegg is instead saying that the bill should be changed through government amendments in the House of Lords. Peers will consider the bill after its passes its third reading in the commons on Wednesday.

The demand for late amendments to the bill highlights Clegg’s concerns about plans to block some terrorist suspects from returning to Britain from Syria and Iraq. Under the terms of the bill, the passport of an “excluded individual is invalidated” for up to two years, denying them the possibility of returning to the UK for that time.

Clegg’s intervention also shows that he is prepared to adopt tough tactics in the months before the general election. The Lib Dems are not saying how the government would be defeated in the House of Lords if the home secretary declines to offer government amendments to the counter-terrorism bill. But it is understood that Clegg is making clear that an alternative amendment by the Labour frontbench, crossbenchers or a Lib Dem backbencher would have little difficulty being passed.