Nick Clegg demands changes to Coalition's controversial 'secret justice' plans Sources close to the Deputy Prime Minister said he told colleagues that the security services "cannot be allowed to ride roughshod over the principle of open justice." His intervention was disclosed as Parliament's joint committee on human rights concluded that Mr Clarke had failed to "come anywhere close" to proving that secret hearings were needed to protect national security. Its report also claimed that a proposal in the Green Paper to give the US a "cast-iron guarantee" that its intelligence material would never be disclosed by British courts was "inconsistent with the rule of law." However, the committee conceded that the US authorities were worried that judges in Britain might make their top-secret reports public, and so suggested there should be a default position not to release foreign intelligence material. Hywel Francis, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said: "Closed material procedures are inherently unfair and the Government has failed to show that extending their use might in some instances contribute to greater ­fairness. The Government's justification is that it sometimes has to settle cases out of court in order to avoid sensitive evidence taken from MI5 and MI6 being made public, preserving relationships with foreign security agencies, and so it is better to have a partial case than none at all. But the committee's report says ministers have not provided evidence that this is a "real and practical problem." The report says the secret hearings are "inherently unfair," as they prevent parties being told all the allegations made against them or seeing documents, and force them to rely on security-vetted lawyers known as Special Advocates.