Imagine this. Barclay’s Bank is banned from operating in Iran for ‘security’ reasons. The bank challenges the government’s decision in the Iranian courts, and the case reaches the Supreme Court. Half way through the hearing, the lead judge announces that the bank’s lawyers must leave the courtroom so that it can consider what the government says is crucial evidence. The government lawyers, however, get to stay and argue their case in the secret hearing.
Unfair? Clearly. Surprising? Not so much. Iran is hardly a bastion of the rule of law. But what if I told you that this exact scenario, involving an Iranian bank and the British Government, happened last week in our own Supreme Court in Westminster?
On Thursday, for the first time in its history the Supreme Court held a secret hearing during which only the Government lawyers, who were one side of the case, could stay in the court room, whilst Bank Mellat, who were suing the Treasury in precisely the scenario described above, were forced to leave.
Lord Neuberger, the Court’s president, made clear in his published
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