Lawrence murderer gets new home and identity - while taxpayers foot the bill

Learco Chindamo, the 27-year-old who knifed Mr Lawrence at the gates of his school 12 years ago, will also get the benefit of a Draconian court order to protect his privacy and prevent anyone revealing where he is, officials close to his case believe.

The benefit of a new home and a new start subsidised by the taxpayer is also likely to be extended to his mother Paquita and his brother Wolfgang. The deal would include long-term police protection and probation support.

It could cost up to £1million a year to give Chindamo this type of protection. The Home Office estimates this is the annual cost of protecting the likes of Maxine Carr under a new identity.

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The new identity at a secret home would put Chindamo into an exclusive band of killers and their associates who have been shifted out of the public's view in the name of protecting their own safety at a cost of millions.

It would also provoke fresh public outrage over the treatment of Chindamo, who last week escaped deportation to his native Italy after a tribunal said that removing him from the country would breach his human rights and break EU laws.

Mr Lawrence's widow Frances criticised the laws that mean his killer cannot be deported.

She said last week: "Chindamo went beyond the law and the Human Rights Act, taking away the most fundamental right of all, my husband's right to life.

"But then he was allowed to pick and choose from it to help him continue his life the way he wants it."

Chindamo has applied for parole and may be released from prison as early as January. Home Office concern at possible vigilante or revenge attacks was revealed in a paper submitted to the tribunal that turned down his deportation.

Officials said in it: "Risk factors might increase because of media and public scrutiny that the appellant might receive. He would need to be excluded from certain parts of the country, community integration would be a problem on release, and he might suffer a backlash."

Chindamo is thought likely to benefit from a 'Mary Bell' order banning anyone from revealing his whereabouts. The legal device is named after the ten-year-old who murdered two boys in 1968 and was later given legal protection in a new identity.

Similar new identities were given to the killers of toddler James Bulger, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. Maxine Carr, girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Huntley, also has full identity protection.

Any Government decision to give Chindamo a new identity would be likely to be followed by a court application on his behalf for an order banning the media from disclosing anything about him.

Such an order could prove embarrassing if the confidence of prison officials that Chindamo is a reformed character proves to be misplaced and he commits further crimes.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said ministers had shown incompetence in the case. "If the Government had won a successful deportation order, the cost would be a fraction of this massive expenditure," he said.