Police hit by curbs on stop and search

The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners, coming after years of complaints that police misused the anti-terror laws to interrogate law-abiding citizens.

It follows a recent European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that the power to search people without suspicion – under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 – was illegal.

Mrs May told the Commons yesterday that the Government could not appeal the judgment – and would not have done even if it could.

"I can therefore tell the House that I will not allow the continued use of Section 44 in contravention of the European Court's ruling and, more importantly, in contravention of our civil liberties," she said.

She said in future Section 44 would only be available where it was "necessary", rather than "expedient" to prevent terrorism.

And she was introducing a new "suspicion threshold" which would limit the use of stop-and-search powers in the future.

"Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using Section 44 powers, instead they will have to rely on Section 43 powers which require officers to reasonably suspect the person to be a terrorist. Officers will only be able to use Section 44 in relation to the search of vehicles.

"I will only confirm these authorisations where they are considered to be necessary and officers will only be able to use them when they have reasonable suspicion."

The changes will be in force until a wide-ranging review of counter-terror legislation by the Government has been completed and acted upon.

The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, backed the move, saying Section 44 had "criminalised and alienated more people than it ever protected".

"We argued against it for 10 years and spent the last seven challenging it all the way to the Court of Human Rights," she said.