Blair 'wrong' over liberties stance

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Tony McNulty, Home Office minister responsible for security, said that Mr Blair's argument was one of a number of mistakes made by the Government in the wake of the July 7 terror attacks in London in 2005 and the September 11 atrocities in the USA.

Acting as if the rules which have governed the British way of life and protected individuals' liberties had changed may even have played into the hands of the terrorists, he suggested.

Too much weight was given to a legislative clampdown on terror groups and not enough to winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim community.

Within weeks of the July 7 attacks, Mr Blair announced a raft of legislative measures to tackle terrorists, including tougher deportation and extradition powers, a new offence of glorifying terrorism and powers to close a place of worship.

Confronting criticisms that his measures would infringe civil liberties, he responded bluntly: "Let no-one be in any doubt, the rules of the game are changing."

But Mr McNulty suggested that ministers had been too ready to adopt exceptional measures which could impact on the liberties enjoyed as part of the British way of life.

He told a meeting sponsored by the Institute of Public Policy Research on the fringe of the Labour conference in Bournemouth that mistakes had been made by the Government, but that ministers had learnt from those mistakes and altered their approach.

"What are the mistakes?" he asked. "With the best will in the world, where we are at now as a Government means that we are coming round to the view that says, actually, the rules of the game haven't changed and to suggest that the rules of the game have changed and we need some specific response to this specific threat is actually to help the other side more than our own side.

"The more these things are tackled through normality, with some little exceptions on top, rather than absolutely by exception, the better. The more your response is rooted in our civil liberties and human rights, with whatever slight tweaks at the top, the better."