GOVERNMENT moves aimed at preventing cases, like that of a psychopath who butchered a teenager in a Blackpool flat, have been welcomed by resort MP Gordon Marsden.

Home Secretary Jack Straw on Monday (Feb 15) announced proposals to lock up indefinitely people with untreatable violent tendencies like Stuart Diamond.

When Diamond, 21, was released from his second jail sentence for a knife attack in 1997, the police had no powers to keep him in custody.

He rented a flat from an unwitting landlady in Park Road, where he butchered Christopher Hartley, 17, that December. Diamond was convicted of murder last month but still refuses to reveal where he disposed of Christopher's head.

Mr Straw's move was attacked by MP Tony Benn who said it could lead to people who have never committed a crime being incarcerated for life.

But Mr Marsden said: "Public safety must be paramount. If the issues highlighted in the Stuart Diamond case have added to the pressure for change, then at least something positive may come from tragedies like the murder of Christopher Hartley."

But Mr Marsden is still concerned whether the police and probation service, who decided not to tell the landlady about Diamond's violent convictions, kept him under sufficiently rigorous surveillance.

"I wrote to the police and probation service asking what supervision he was under," he said. "They told me that on his release they decided to safeguard the people thought to be most at risk from him and to try to get him into a secure unit, like a bail hostel.

"They tried half-a-dozen, but none would take him because of his history. By then he was refusing to go to a hostel anyway and both police and probation officers said they were frustrated that the law as it stood did not allow them to detain him in secure accommodation.

"When he found his own accommodation in Park Road the probation service and police decided not to tell the landlady about his background, apparently out of concern that if she threw him out he might take out his grudge on her, but that he would be kept under surveillance, the police stop-checking him and monitoring his movements regularly.

"I'm broadly satisfied, given the circumstances they then had, that they did what they could to get him in secure accommodation, but I still think it was a very difficult decision not to inform the landlady.

"On that basis I'm seeking more information about how much surveillance he was under."

A police spokesman said: "If Mr Marsden has some further questions then we will do our best to answer them if he puts them in writing."

Diamond's ex-landlady, who did not wish to be named, said she welcomed Mr Straw's announcement to strengthen protection for the public.

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