Kenneth Clarke's plans for secret courts savaged by lawyers The Rev Nicholas Mercer: "The bill has one principal aim and that is to cover up UK complicity in rendition and torture." Controversial government plans to introduce a new generation of secret courts have been dealt a major blow after hundreds of lawyers attacked them as "contrary to the rule of law." As Kenneth Clarke prepares to table final amendments, in an effort to win over critics, the group of lawyers called for the "dangerous and unnecessary" justice and security bill to be scrapped. The intervention in the Daily Mail by the 702 lawyers, who include the army's most senior legal officer during the Iraq war, comes as Clarke insists that judges will play a key role in deciding whether the courts will sit in secret. Clarke, who retained responsibility for the bill after losing his job as justice secretary last year, has been involved in a lengthy battle over plans for secret court hearings that would block the public disclosure of sensitive intelligence material. Civil rights groups have warned that extending the secret hearings, known as closed material procedures (CMPs), into the main civil courts in England and Wales would threaten open justice. The bill would restrict access to some sensitive intelligence to the trial judge and special advocates cleared for security who would represent claimants. In a letter to the Daily Mail, the 702 lawyers say the special sittings would "fatally undermine" the fairness of court hearings and would "erode core principles of our civil justice system." The Rev Nicholas Mercer, a lieutenant colonel who was the army's most senior lawyer during the last Iraq war, told the Daily Mail: "The justice and security bill has one principal aim and that is to cover up UK complicity in rendition and torture. The bill is an affront to the open justice on which this country rightly prides itself and, above all, it is an affront to human dignity. The fact that some of those individuals who are complicit in rendition and torture can not only assist in the drafting of the bill but also vote to cover their tracks is a constitutional scandal. It is little wonder that the bill has been heavily criticised by the UN Rapporteur on Torture and condemned by the vast majority of lawyers and human rights organisations in this country. The government defends the change on the grounds that evidence was heard in public during litigation brought on behalf of Binyam Mohamed and other former Guantánamo Bay detainees. The court of appeal agreed to disclose CIA information which showed MI5 and MI6 knew that Mohamed, a UK resident, had been subject to abuse. Clarke said that the new amendments would ensure that a judge must be satisfied that the government has followed correct procedures in making a claim for public interest immunity before a secret hearing can be sanctioned. The minister without portfolio told the Daily Mail: "With these final amendments the government has gone to extreme lengths to meet every practical legal objection that has been made about the bill. The judge now has total discretion over whether to order a closed material procedure following an application either by the government, the claimant, or from the court of its own motion. I do not believe closed material procedures are ideal, but in the very exceptional circumstances where national security is at stake, they offer the only practical means of delivering justice where otherwise there would be none.