One might have thought that the proposal for ‘secret trials’ reported in last week’s Law Society Gazette would have prompted something rather stronger than the article which appeared in the 8 March issue.

This proposed bill strikes at the heart of the British legal system and has been roundly condemned by lawyers from across the profession. One senior member of the judiciary has recently remarked on the damage that will be done to the integrity of the judicial process and the reputation of English justice if this bill is passed. Yet you would have thought from the article that this bill was a piece of mundane legal housekeeping.

The same judge also articulated the real reason behind this bill when he stated that information as to how officials admitted treating a detainee during interrogation is neither ‘secret’ nor ‘intelligence’ - yet this is the very information the government wishes to conceal in this bill, while having you believe that the (poor) security services cannot defend themselves.

This bill has nothing to do with the government being unable to defend itself and everything to do with UK complicity in rendition and torture. It is right that it should be roundly condemned from across the profession.

Reverend Nicholas Mercer (the British Army’s former chief legal adviser in Iraq), Gillingham, Dorset