Richard Ford (left), Times home correspondent, explains how the Government is trying to get round its difficulties in prosecuting terror suspects

Why does the Government want to hold pre-trial hearings in secret in high security courts?

Basically they use a secret pre-trial process as a way to get around the problem of what you do with highly sensitive evidence that the security services wouldn't want to reveal to suspects - either because of what they will learn about national security issues, or about the techniques that the security services use to gather information.

The courts would use special security-vetted lawyers and judges to assemble and hear a pre-trial process based on the secretly obtained evidence to see whether there is a basis for a normal trial.

Suspects would know what they are charged with, but they would not see the evidence that has been assembled against them. If there is enough evidence to go to a trial, the Government does not have to disclose how it got the evidence.

Is this a new idea? Where does it come from?

The secret pre-trial process is something that is already used in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which was set up to hear cases of people the Government wants to deport for reasons of national security. The use of such a process was examined by the Newton Committee in 2003.

Will it help prosecutors and the campaign against terrorism?

It's really just a process to get around the problem of using very sensitive evidence, such as intercept evidence and phone taps. But I think there is a debate in the Home Office about whether to adapt a more inquisitorial approach to these trials, as is practised in Europe, rather than England's traditional adversarial approach.

Charles Clarke has admitted he is not a fan of the adversarial approach to justice, but my hunch is that to challenge that would be such a far-reaching change that it would need a huge amount of thought. Altering the adversarial system would mean a real, fundamental change in the way that English justice works.

Are there likely to be human rights issues?

Well, it's secrecy. This would be an extension of secret hearings and people get very upset about that.

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