OTHER than terrorists, no one wants to see Britain’s national security put at risk.

But there is a crucial balance to be found between David Cameron’s determination to plug “gaps” in national security and the need to protect civil liberties.

Controversial proposals have been put forward to allow sensitive intelligence information to be heard in secret by a judge and “special advocates” in civil cases against the Government.

They coincide with plans to increase the monitoring of emails and internet use.

Few would argue that information should be publicly disclosed if there was a genuine risk of putting lives at risk.

But we share the concerns raised by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg about ministers, and not judges, being allowed to order civil court cases and inquests to be heard in secret.

If the decision lies with politicians, how can there ever be public confidence that secrecy really is in the wider national interest, and not merely in the interest of the Government?

Successive prime ministers have declared that terrorism will have succeeded if we allow it to force us into fundamental changes to the established principles of our society.

Open justice is one of those principles and we must be extremely careful about blocking the view of the truth.