UK Secret Courts Bill Sneaking In Via Back Door

Justice and Security Bill

We are back to the age old political ploy of slipping contentious legislation through whilst everyone is looking the other way.

The most recent demonstration of this is ensuring everyone's attention is focussed on same-sex marriage, whilst furtively re-introducing The Justice and Security Bill quietly in the background and cancelling previous amendments

Political sleight of hand that we all believed had gone away when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell departed, although unfortunately it does not seem to be the case with the present Government

Nevertheless, there is something ironic about the 'liberal party' supporting something of this nature, although one can see that self-interest over-rides natural justice with all political animals. Furthermore, this mind-set has already been demonstrated by Nick Clegg in other areas, where his 'horse trading' took precedence over doing the right thing for the benefit of the community

The disappointing thing about the recent successful changes to this 'Secret' Justice Bill is that they are geared to protect Ministers and would further strengthen their ability to make use of secret courts to defend themselves; so matters such as the Expenses Scandal would probably never have seen the light of day

Do we really want a system of secret justice hugely weighted in favour of Governments and those in power to the detriment of the 'ordinary' man in the street - what price a free democratic society?

The main lobbyists would seem to be the MI5/6 security chiefs and quite frankly they do not have a great track record themselves

Remember the Dr David Kelly incident, which has never been fully explained to this day. There is still a weight of opinion that Dr Kelly was killed by MI5/6, and unfortunately a cloud still hangs over this episode because of the non-disclosure and secrecy surrounding the whole matter. Whilst Lord Hutton's public inquiry ruled that Dr Kelly killed himself, there are a great many who simply feel that Lord Hutton was the Governments tame poodle, to deliver the desired result and gloss over a number of unexplained incidents surrounding the situation. It is worth noting that

Dr David Kelly is the only person in modern English legal history

to be denied a proper inquest

With this in mind are MI5/6 the best organisations to be interfering or lobbying for items to be included or removed from the justice system?

Once again it is about abuse of trust and even though legislation is introduced today to cater for one specific set of circumstances, politicians & civil servants have a track record of bending and abusing things to accommodate or protect their own agenda in the future

References

HM Government - Justice and Security Bill

Daily Mail - Law chief to probe KGB agent's claim that David Kelly was 'exterminated'

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