Well, this is another fine mess. You can do two sensible things with control orders: abolish them or keep ’em. The government has boldly tried to find a third way: keeping them but giving them a new name so people think that there’s been some real change. In general there has not. If you were opposed to control orders I can’t see how you can support TPIMS. And if you supported control orders then you can, I think, make a case that they were more effective, and certainly easier to explain, than their pseudo-replacement.
So, heckuva job, Dave’n’Nick. You’ve come up with a “compromise” that is barely a compromise at all and leaves everyone unhappy. Since ministers clearly felt the case for maintaining control orders was stronger than they had appreciated while they were in opposition it would have been wiser to just say so, rather than hum and haw and pretend that they were changing policy when they have not in fact done so.
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