Charles Clarke reacted angrily today after a senior United Nations official warned that his plans to deport foreign extremists breached international human rights obligations.

A UN official objected to the Home Secretary's announcement that "preachers of hate" are soon to be deported from the UK.

But the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, accused the Government of trying to circumvent its duty not to deport people to countries where they could face torture or abuse.

The Home Secretary has different priorities to those of the UN.

Today the Home Secretary retorted furiously that the UN was too pre-occupied with the human rights of terrorists when it should be more concerned about their victims.

"The human rights of those people who were blown up on the Tube in London on July 7 are, to be quite frank, more important than the human rights of the people who committed those acts," he told the ITV News Channel.