Has New Labour’s unremitting assault on civil rights passed its high-water mark? There have been encouraging signs of late. Parliament’s battered credentials were given a fleeting boost when Jack Straw dropped proposals for secret inquests. And new home secretary Alan Johnson seems less enthusiastic about ID cards than predecessor Jacqui Smith.

The courts are doing their bit too. Strasbourg declared unlawful the policy of keeping all unconvicted suspects’ DNA profiles indefinitely, though the government has done its damnedest to sidestep the ruling. And last week the control order regime for terror suspects was thrown into doubt after a ‘historic’ law lords ruling that it was unlawful to use ‘secret evidence’.

Don’t hang out the bunting just yet, however. Depressing in its predictability is the decision to hold the ‘independent’ Iraq war inquiry behind closed doors, in front of a gaggle of hand-picked establishment grandees. The inquiry will not consider issues of civil or criminal liability and it is even doubtful whether the legality of the military action will be covered.

So much for Mr Brown’s pledge to be more ‘open’. A public inquiry would mean ‘lawyers, lawyers and lawyers’, said the prime minister. So what? The relatives of 179 dead British service personnel deserve the unvarnished truth about why we went to Iraq and what happened there. Nothing less will do.