Judges reveal anger over curbs on power

The guardian has an article about the anger of Judges about governemtn interferance with justice. The things that the article point (to which a cliassical liberal like myself would add many more) out are:

• the recently implemented Criminal Justice Act 2003, which imposes mandatory and minimum sentences, reducing the judges' discretion to fit the punishment to the individual case;
• the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which allows the home secretary to restrict individuals' liberty on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities, with minimal oversight by the judges;
• the Inquiries Act 2005, which restricts the independence of judges appointed to chair inquiries, allowing ministers to decide what evidence is given in public and to block the disclosure of evidence.

This last one they claim is because of the costs of the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday, which is false. Had that been the problem then they could have introduced the legislation any time in their second term as for all of that time the the never ending Saville inquiry has been running, with obvious great expence. Not the Hutton inquiry is a much more likely cause as it did cause real embarrasment for New Labour as it gathered evidence by bringing to the surface the real reasons that we had gone to war, and the lies that the Tyrant Blair used to cover them up. It was only the tightly limited terms of reference, which basically stated that all the blame must be put on the BBC, that saved them. The Inquires act of 2005 is there to make sure close shaves like Hutton do not happen again, if the judge starts to investigate the 'wrong' things (e.g. stuff that is embarrassing to Tony Blair), then they just change the terms of reference to stop him. If the judge looks like coming to the 'wrong' conclusion (e.g. one embarrassing to Tony Blair) they shut him down before he can report.