Tag Archives: Justice and Security Bil

Jo Shaw

Jo Shaw asks… Is there a way out of the Secret Courts mess?

By Jo Shaw | Thu 31st January 2013 - 4:53 pm

It’s a strange and rare thing for a Liberal Democrat to be pinning her hopes for a civil liberties victory on a combination of government bad faith, Conservatives of principle voting the right way and Labour sticking to their guns. Yet that combination, combined with the votes of Lib Dem MPs, could offer a lifeline for those campaigning to defeat secret courts contained in the Justice and Security Bill.

The Bill is now in Committee in the Commons. At the last possible moment the government published its proposed amendments to the Bill. The government line is that these amendments clarify the …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged | 17 Comments
Lewis James Brown

The Independent View: National security is paramount but ‘secret courts’ are an illiberal attack on British justice

By Lewis James Brown | Tue 29th January 2013 - 12:05 pm

Supreme Court - Some rights reserved by cphoffman42In September 2012, the Liberal Democrat Conference voted overwhelmingly against the most contentious aspect of the government’s Justice and Security Bill – the extension of ‘secret courts’, otherwise known as Closed Material Procedures (CMPs), into civil courts.

This would allow ministers to submit a CMP application to a judge that material relating to national security be withheld from the defendant/claimant and their legal team despite being used as evidence. As Andrew Tyrie MP and Anthony Peto QC explain in “Neither Just nor Secure”, published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, this is worrying because “in an adversarial system such as the English one, the right to know and challenge the opposing case is not merely a feature of the system, it is the system”.

Continue reading »
Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Leon Duveen
    Thankyou Mo for this very perceptive article. From last October I have been trying to caution Israel & Israelis against trying to find a military solutio...
  • Helen Dudden
    The veterans are one sad fact of life. It's a 10 year waiting list for an accessible flat or home. Many are left losing limbs. Often a long stay in hospital ...
  • Roland
    @Simon “ I think the real lesson there for us is, if the UK ever gets a written constitution, make sure it can be changed and updated without too much difficu...
  • Suzanne Fletcher
    Hope that the issues in the important motion are able to be promoted far and wide beyond the Lib Dems, so they end up being put into practice. our Lib Dem parl...
  • Joseph Bourke
    This author writes Politicians of...