London, Nov. 17 British government has spent 600,000 pounds from taxpayers' money on terrorism suspects living under effective house arrest.

According to British Home Office figures, the terror suspects have received 611,470 pounds on "living costs" that includes household bills and telephone costs since April 2007.

"The money has been spent on accommodation, council tax, utility bills, telephone line rental, prepaid telephone cards, phone bills and "other subsistence," the Home Office said. here are currently 13 people under control orders, controversial legal restraints on their movements and actions that are imposed because the security services say they pose a terrorist threat.

Since the orders were introduced in 2005, a total of 44 people have had orders imposed on them.

Of those, 24 have received money for their living expenses. That suggests that each has received an average of more than 25,000 pounds.

The Opposition has called for scrapping "costly" control orders and putting suspects on trial.

"Control orders cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. A Conservative government would review the morally objectionable and costly control order regime with a view to replacing it by the trial of suspects through the normal court system," Baroness Neville-Jones, Conservative Baroness Neville-Jones said.

However, the Government says the suspects cannot be put on trial because the security services say the information that would be used to prosecute them is too sensitive to disclose in court.

"When dealing with suspected terrorists, prosecution is, and will continue to be, our preferred approach. Where we cannot prosecute, and the individual concerned is a foreign national, we look to detain and then deport them. For those we cannot either prosecute or deport, control orders are the best available disruptive tool for managing the risk they pose," a Home Office spokesman said. (ANI)