Over at CentreForum’s blog, Stephen Tall has proposed the Lib Dem conference as the think-tank’s latest ‘Liberal Hero of the Week’ for its stance in opposing the Coalition’s plans for secret courts. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s not the fact that David Cameron doesn’t know the translation of ‘Magna Carta’ that worries me. It’s that he doesn’t appear to understand its central tenet:
No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.
Fair and open justice may be enshrined within Magna Carta, but it is undermined by the Coalition’s proposed justice and security bill, which would see the extension of secret courts, known as closed material procedures (CMPs), into the civil courts in England and Wales. …
It’s easy to be cynical about party conferences, to argue they cannot change anything. Yet this week’s debate on ‘secret courts’ was a reminder that not only can they produce a first-rate contest of ideas, but that they also offer a route for party members democratically to change government policy.
You can read Stephen Tall’s post in full here.
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