THIS is the sort of ‘justice’ associated with totalitarian regimes t hrough the ages. It should have no place in a civilised country’s legal system.

IT is a fundamental principle of Britain’s open justice that citizens who appear before the courts should be able to know and to challenge the claims against them.

As the Mail highlights today, however, this cornerstone of civil liberty is now in grave jeopardy.

For under deeply disturbing proposals, slipped out with little public comment, the Coalition plans a radical extension of the secret justice introduced by Labour to deal with foreign terrorist suspects.

So if ministers get their way, the Home Secretary will have the power to decree that any civil cases in which she deems the evidence to be ‘sensitive’ should be held behind closed doors. Apart from hearings over compensation claims by terrorists, these could include military inquests, inquiries into police shootings and medical negligence cases.

It is chilling enough that the Press and public would be excluded from the euphemistically named ‘Closed Material Procedures’ – so mocking the principle that justice must be seen to be done.

More sinister still is that even those who face allegations – and their lawyers, too – will be banned from knowing, let alone challenging, the evidence against them.

Instead, the job of defending them will be left to so-called Special Advocates – an elite group of lawyers offered privileged access to restricted evidence who, in most cases, will not even have met the people they are expected to represent.

Secret charges, secret evidence, secret judgments. Isn’t this the sort of ‘justice’ associated with totalitarian regimes through the ages?

Yes, this paper understands the motive behind Ken Clarke’s Justice and Security Green Paper. For taxpayers have been sickened by huge payouts made to terrorist suspects, to avoid sensitive security evidence being aired in open court. An added complication is that some cases involve intelligence gathered by the U.S., which the American authorities require Britain not to disclose.

But what is this country coming to, if the Coalition is prepared to compromise our ancient right to fair and open justice in order to please Washington? Like our lopsided extradition laws, isn’t this just one more example of British ministers’ abject readiness to kowtow to our ally?

The truth is that Mr Clarke’s plans are so glaringly open to abuse that they have no place in a civilised country’s legal system.

In many cases, the Government itself is being sued. So how can it possibly be right that the Home Secretary, as a selfinterested member of that Government, should have the power to decide that the hearing must take place in secret?

Isn’t there a huge danger that she or her successors will declare evidence too sensitive for open court, when it is merely embarrassing to the authorities?

Consider. If these measures had been in force during the inquests on servicemen killed in Iraq, we might never have learned that lives were put needlessly at risk by inadequate equipment. In the same way, the Government could have hushed up the inquiry into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician mistaken for a terrorist by the police – while it is likely that MI5’S failings over the 7/7 bombings would never have come to light. As Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, puts it: ‘David Cameron came to power saying “sunlight is the best disinfectant”. We should not sacrifice Britain’s open and transparent j ustice system simply to protect politicians and their officials from embarrassment.’ The good news is that ministers privately describe Mr Clarke’s proposals as a ‘very green paper’ – suggesting that they may think again. The Mail, alongside other lovers of civil liberty, will be campaigning vigorously to see they do.