Government to scale back emergency laws under pressure from civil liberties groups

Plans to give the police and the Army sweeping emergency powers to ban street demonstrations and seize property were diluted by the Government yesterday in the face of a civil liberties outcry.

Plans to give the police and the Army sweeping emergency powers to ban street demonstrations and seize property were diluted by the Government yesterday in the face of a civil liberties outcry.

The Civil Contingencies Bill, the biggest shake-up of emergency laws since early last century, will cover terrorist attack, natural disasters and epidemics. But the Government backed off from an earlier proposal that the powers could be triggered by an event that threatened "political, administrative or economic stability", which critics claimed could have been used to outlaw marches against the Iraq war or to combat the fuel protests of 2000. The Bill is intended to improve co-ordination between the emergency services and to boost planning by local authorities for catastrophes. It has been drawn up after warnings from MI5 and the Metropolitan Police that the risk of a terrorist outrage was growing.

Under the Bill's provisions, the security forces would have the right to make arrests, ban people from travelling or gathering in large numbers and evacuate areas. They would be able to requisition property, take over trains and airports and set up casualty centres.

For the first time, regional states of emergency could be declared to help combat the rapid spread of diseases such as foot-and-mouth. Councils, police chief constables, fire authorities, NHS trusts, port health authorities and the Environment Agency will be obliged to have up-to-date contingency planning for dealing with disasters such as a nuclear accident, oil spills, severe flooding and catastrophic storms.

Ministers will be able to suspend Acts of Parliament to cope with an emergency. They will be able to take control of major financial institutions, or declare a Bank Holiday, to protect the markets from extreme fluctuations following a disaster. The Government's account could be removed from the Bank of England to allow it to continue to function if there is an attack on the City of London.

Doubts remain over whether the plans have been backed with enough public money and whether too much responsibility has been devolved to local authorities. And with the Bill set to become law almost three years after the 11 September attacks, the Government has faced criticism for not acting more quickly. The proposals for the emergency powers were set out in draft form last year by ministers. But they were denounced by human rights groups and condemned by a joint committee of MPs and peers as open to abuse, warning they could lead to the "dismantling of democracy" as a future government could invoke the powers simply "to protect its own existence". The Bill, published yesterday, now says an emergency is an event or situation which "threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment or the security of the UK or part of it".

Lewis Moonie, the committee's chairman, said: "The Government has gone a very long way to accepting the concerns we raised and I am well satisfied with the response."

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the pressure group Liberty, said the Government had taken a step in the right direction. She said: "Their initial proposals were quite terrifying. But these proposals remain worrisome. There needs to be absolute clarity about the definition of an emergency. Sweeping, draconian powers should not be exercised unless there is a serious and immediate threat to life and limb."

THE POWERS

The Civil Contingencies Bill creates the powers to:

* Send the armed forces into anywhere in Britain;

* Ban movement of people and vehicles in an area;

* Order evacuation of an area;

* Seize, confiscate or destroy property, with or without compensation;

* Destroy animal or plant life, with or without compensation;

* Ban "assemblies of specified kinds, at specified places or at specified times";

* Arrest people who fail to co-operate with the emergency powers;

* Set up special tribunals.

The legislation covers war, terrorism, contamination of land with "harmful biological, chemical or radioactive matter or oil", flooding and "disruption or destruction of plant life or animal life".