ENGAGE welcomed the party manifestos of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties with their assertion that "security measures must be proportional and consistent with liberal democratic values and the rule of law", and "the best way to combat terrorism is to prosecute terrorists, not give away hard-won British freedoms," respectively.

We welcome this opportunity to contribute to the review of counter-terrorism and security powers and present our responses to the six strands forming the scope of the review.

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Columnist and Chief leader Writer of The Times, Daniel Finkelstein, in the paper today (£) argues that whatever the British people may think of Abu Qatada, the fact of the matter is that the rule of law is not something to be casually suspended just so the Home Secretary, Theresa May, can send him packing off to Jordan.

“It is Abu Qatada who thinks that it doesn’t much matter if someone is tortured or wrongly convicted, because Allah sits in judgement anyway. We – just to remind everyone – are the people who don’t think that”, he writes. Which is odd to say the least. Surely if Abu Qatada didn’t care much about his welfare he wouldn’t be contesting the Home Secretary’s determination to deport him at all costs.

Finkelstein argues, “Deporting Abu Qatada because we dislike him so much that we don’t much care what happens to him is precisely what human rights law is designed to prevent”. On that point, as previously argued by Peter Oborne, he is absolutely right.

BBC News reports mon the election of a UKIP councillor to Rotherham Metropolitan Council.

Cavan Vines won in the by-election prompted by the departure of Shaun Wright, who was elected as the PCC for South Yorkshire in last November’s elections.

Vines has been already been exposed for his anti-Muslim views. The Guardian last month drew attention to posts by Vines on a blog in which he wrote:

"Muslims go to war warring [sic] the same cloths as ordinary people who they hide behind they cover their faces, they hide behind women and children they set up rocket launches in school yards they use children to push wheel barrows into crowds and soldiers then detonate it killing innocent people SO WHO ARE THE COWARDS.

"Its about time the Government and the Police stopped pandering to these so called British Muslims and other foreign nationals."

In relation to an accident involving Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham some years ago, Vines posted the remark:

"If you are a Muslim in Britain you can almost do what you want with the good old Labour Governments blessing,"

The Sunday Mirror meanwhile exposes further cases of anti-Muslim comments made by UKIP officials on social networking sites:

Chris Pain, leader of the opposition at Lincolnshire Council and the UKIP’s East Midlands regional chairman, wrote:

“Have you noticed that if you ­rearrange the letters in ‘illegal ­immigrants’, and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-********, raghead ******** with you.’”

Peter Entwistle, party chairman in Bury, Greater Manchester, labelled President Obama a Muslim, writing: “I bet he’s a closet ‘Imam’ as well!

He added, "If I ever see him on a Greyhound bus wearing a rucksack, I’m getting off!!”

Misty Thackeray, deputy chairman of UKIP in Scotland “liked” a Facebook group claiming “paedophilia is part of Islamic tradition”.

Thackeray also “praised far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a self-­confessed “hater of Islam”.

“Recommending Mr Wilders’ new book, he said: “Geert is great ...(peace be upon him.. lol) ..!”

A UKIP councillor in Boston, Lincs, Tiggs Keywood- Wainwright, complained about mosques being built in “quintessentially English” Cambridge saying “Is nowhere sacred for the Brits in Britain any more?”

“Bottom line is we have too many muslims in this country!”

Nigel Farage, UKIP’s leader has stated that the party doesn’t have the capability to assess each individual member’s compliance with party standards saying that with party membership rising by almost 50%, it was likely it would face “one or two teething problems”.

The question remains, who is responsible for vetting individual’s standing for election and what role is there, given the growing evidence of anti-Muslim views expressed by UKIP members, for the Equality and Human Rights Commission on ensuring equalities legislation is not breached?

BBC News covers the debate in the House of Lords yesterday prompted by a question posed by Lord Dykes on the delays to the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report.

Lord Dykes tabled the question:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will hold discussions with the administrators of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war to ascertain a date for publication.”

The Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Hill, responded:

“My Lords, the Government do not have any plans to hold such a discussion with the Iraq inquiry. Sir John Chilcot advised the Prime Minister last July that the inquiry would be in a position to begin the process of giving those subject to criticism in the report the opportunity to make representations by the middle of 2013, and that the inquiry would submit its report once that process had been completed.”

Baroness Williams, raising the issue of lessons to be learnt and the knock-on effect to improvements in decision making presented by further delays to the report’s publication, stated:

“…the lessons to be learnt from an inquiry—and the lessons to be learnt from this are probably among the most important of all— depend a little on the passage of time between the findings of that inquiry and the use of those lessons to  affect policy. I ask him to bear in mind, as he considers this, the gap between the necessary and right attempt to give people the right to respond, but also the importance of the conclusions for the future work of this Government’s policy as well as the policy of the Opposition. “

The 10th anniversary of the decision to invade Iraq was marked last month and four years on from the establishment of the Chilcot Inquiry, in 2009, the prospect of full disclosure about the evidence and arguments that informed that decision grow ever more remote.