Lib Dems prepare for conference showdown on secret courts

Ken Clarke tabled a series of amendments to the Justice and Security Bill last night, aimed at getting the legislation through the Commons when it reaches Report Stage next week. This is the ‘secret courts’ bill, the one that has upset a group of Tory MPs, the Lib Dem grassroots (and, to a lesser extent, their parliamentarians), the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Daily Mail. The changes are quite technical, but government sources insist that they should be sufficient to satisfy the critics. They are as follows:

• Claimants can apply for a secret hearing for material they don’t hold themselves.
• The judge in the case must be satisfied that the government has considered whether to make a claim for public interest immunity before applying for a secret hearing. The Bill’s critics wanted the test to be that the government had exhausted the PII process first, so this is a step down.