If there's one minister whose every action betrays the menace of the government's intent it is Jack Straw. His malicious drive against freedom and openness is phenomenal.

In the spring he gave every impression of retreating on the government's plans to hold closed inquests, without a jury, on grounds of national security. The cross-party feeling against what was clearly an attempt to increase secrecy was so strong that the justice department announced that it was abandoning the measure.

It pays not to relax when the government appears to make a withdrawal and indeed Liberty, doing an excellent job of scrutiny, has established that unnoticed clauses added to the coroners and justice bill will allow an inquest to be suspended and replaced by a secret inquiry. These amendments have exactly the same effect as the abandoned measures.

Following the precedents set out in the Inquiries Act, which granted vast powers to ministers over public inquiries with barely an objection in parliament, the coroners and justice bill allows for an inquiry to be instigated by a minister in order to protect the government. The minister could then restrict disclosure and the publication of documents, and remove evidence from final report, in other words they have total control over the proceedings and the verdict of what would have been a public inquest.

National security will be the pretext for triggering this secret inquiry but of course everyone appreciates that Straw is simply creating measures that protect government and the civil service from, for instance, allegations about soldiers being poorly equipped. For ministers like Straw the concept of national security is indistinguishable from their own protection.

These clauses capture all that it is rotten and deceitful about the government's attitude to the public. They place secrecy and ministerial power above the right of the public to know what is happened, especially in the case of deaths that may have been caused by the incompetence of the state.

Isabella Sankey of Liberty said,

It is thoroughly perverse for a government that has spent over a decade lecturing the public about victims' rights to attempt to exclude bereaved families from open justice. When will New Labour's obsession with secret courts and parallel legal systems end? There is no accountability without transparency.

I could not have put it better myself.