Secret justice and the liberal in Mr Clegg

IN a blistering report, an all-party group of MPS and Peers endorses every word this paper has written about the Government’s chilling plans to hold ‘sensitive’ civil trials and inquests behind closed doors.

The proposals for secret justice are ‘ inherently unfair’, says the Joint Committee on Human Rights. They are based on ‘vague predictions’ and ‘spurious assertions’ about the dangers to national security posed by public hearings.

And most devastatingly, they represent a ‘radical departure from long-standing traditions of open justice’ and ‘cannot in our view be considered to be consistent with the rule of law’.

In attacking the Justice Secretary’s plans, which would let the Government hush up inquests into military deaths and police shootings, the committee joins a thunderous chorus of protest from lawyers, MPS and civil liberties groups.

Their passionate belief, and ours, is that justice concealed by the state is justice denied. Indeed, almost everyone who has read the Green Paper has been appalled – including 57 of the 69 security-cleared Special Advocates who have experience of the secret hearings introduced by Labour for deportation cases.

The truth is that the only supporters appear to be members of the security services, who claim that open justice would stop America from sharing its intelligence – without offering evidence that comes ‘anywhere close’, in the committee’s words, to proving existing safeguards inadequate.

So far, Kenneth Clarke has offered only an avuncular assurance that he has heard the protests – and a suggestion that his plans may be ‘too broadly drawn’.

Yet, as the Mail reports today, he may now be forced to make the radical amendments we have demanded.

For in a hugely welcome intervention, Nick Clegg has warned his party will not support the plans as they stand, insisting the new powers must not apply to inquests and that judges, not ministers, should have the last word. Perhaps the liberal in the Lib Dem leader is not quite dead after all. With his reawakened love of liberty, may we now hope he will block state snooping on the internet – and fight for Gary Mckinnon?