Lords throw out secret court plans

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-majority.html

Secret courts plan in chaos: Lords reject closed hearings by crushing majority

- Peers voted to remove ministers' exclusive right to apply for secret hearings
- Critics say Government's proposals will seriously threaten Britain's reputation for open and fair justice

Plans for secret courts were left in tatters last night by the House of Lords.

Peers voted by crushing majorities for fundamental changes to the Justice and Security Bill, which would allow civil cases involving national security to be conducted in secret.

By margins of over 100 votes, peers voted to remove ministers’ exclusive right to apply for secret hearings and to give judges ultimate discretion in deciding whether or not they should be held behind closed doors.

As the legislation was introduced in the Lords, the Government’s plans came under devastating attack from several of Britain’s most senior retired judges and politicians.

Peers voted by crushing majorities for fundamental changes to the Justice and Security Bill

The defeats suggest ministers will have to return to the drawing board and accept a series of amendments – or risk seeing the entire piece of legislation thrown out.

Critics say the Government’s proposals will seriously threaten Britain’s reputation for open and fair justice.

The Daily Mail has led criticism of the plans to allow so-called ‘closed material procedures’ (CMPs), in which cases are conducted entirely in private, in any civil hearing.

Defendants or claimants will not be allowed to be present, or know or challenge the case against them, and must be represented by a security-cleared special advocate, rather than their own lawyer.

Currently, such procedures are used in tiny numbers of immigration and deportation hearings, but the Government wants to extend them across the civil courts in cases deemed to involve national security.

The legislation has been drafted in close co-operation with the security services, which have claimed other countries may stop sharing intelligence with Britain if it risks being disclosed in open court.

But crossbencher Lord Pannick, a leading lawyer, described the measures as a ‘radical departure from the principles of common law’.

Another decision from the (unelected) House of Lords which validates why I was right in switching from supporting it's abolition to supporting it's retention. Here you have a case where elected House of Commons is supposed to represent the public yet doesn't, and the House of Lords (rightly) blocks this deeply damaging and sinister legislation which goes against our constitution and values of common law. The same applies to the Monarchy - whilst it may not be elected it enjoys more support than any elected Prime Minister has ever recieved. An unelected house defends liberty, yet the democratically elected house seeks to end liberty. We ought rememeber we are a constitutional monarchy, not a democracy.

And just a last note, remember the Conservatives pledged to end the big brother state of Labour? yeah, I rightly said they'd continue in the footsteps of Labour when they entered office in regards to this issue - and they have. So have a think about it, why do you think the political parties want to abolish the House of Lords and have it elected? it's not hard to figure out why.

Thoughts?

[GommeInc]

It's another shot to the foot for those who wanted the Lords to become electable. The Lords are always making great decisions unlike the Commons. People need to lose this false idea that electable automatically means useful, when that seems to be the opposite here.