All in the national interest

It seems that the law pages of the Times newspaper recently carried the report that the Government has included a clause in the Counter-Terrorism Bill which is of great concern.(This was reported by the ever vigilant Guido Fawkes, on his website yesterday.)

The clause would give the Government power to decree secret courts where openness is not deemed deemed to be in the (ubiquitous) "public interest". The Home Secretary could order that a jury not be summoned and exclude the public from inquests or replace the coroner with a Government appointee.

Coming on top of the forcing through of detention without trial for up to 42 days, frequent statements about abolishing the right to jury trials for some offences, the summary justice and warnings/cautions by police, this seems another attack on our traditional open system of justice - that justice must be done and seen to be done.

The motivation is not difficult to imagine. If coroners sitting in inquests where the result could be embarrassing to the Government can be replaced with "safe"chairmen, or their verdicts not revealed to the public the Government could relax safely. This could be especially true in the case of inquests on servicemen killed in action, where coroners have begun to question the quality of equipment provision or its availability.

"The public interest" is such an elastic term that anything could be concealed, even to the biscuits eaten by civil servants with their coffee.

The is a Government which began in 1997 with the intention to be open and accountable, and passed the Freedom of Information Act, but has ever since rowed back on its commitments and is now undoing rights enjoyed by the people of this country for centuries.