In response to your editorial (see [2009] Gazette, 29 January, 8), I would like to express my agreement and fears for civil liberties. Placing coroners’ courts behind closed doors can only have been proposed to avoid government embarrassment and cover up mistakes. Jack Straw cannot be suggesting that ‘national security’ has only now become an issue in inquests, when it was not before.

The systematic assault on the criminal justice system, and now secret inquests, should alarm all who believe that a fair and just courts system is a necessity for a democratic country.

The record is worrying: thousands of new offences; proposed amendments to the PACE codes; extended detention of terror suspects; routine use and extension of supposedly temporary ‘stop and search’ powers in London; the case of Jean Charles de Menezes; increased use of previous convictions and hearsay in criminal trials; abolition of the ‘double jeopardy’ rule; ID cards, with the accompanying national database... the list goes on.

Consider also the woeful underfunding of both HM Courts Service and criminal defence advocates through the Legal Service Commission, and the picture is of a government eroding liberties while simultaneously removing safeguards and access to justice.

Lee Mott, BLB Solicitors, Swindon