Ananova:

Former home secretary Charles Clarke has hit out at the country's top judges, accusing them of refusing to engage in a serious debate on how the legal system should confront the threat of terrorism.

Writing in London's Evening Standard newspaper, he complained that members of the senior judiciary were taking decisions of "deep concern" in security cases, without having any responsibility themselves for public safety.

He said that it was essential for the judges to engage with ministers in a "serious and considered debate" on how they should deal with terrorist suspects if public confidence in the system was not to be undermined.

Mr Clarke, who clashed repeatedly with the courts when he was in office over the Government's anti-terrorism powers, said that the current situation was causing "confusion and disorder" within the criminal justice system.

"In these circumstances we desperately need a mature discussion between parliamentarians and the most senior lawyers in this country about how that criminal justice system deals with the new pressures arising from the possibility of suicide-bomb terrorist attacks," he said.

"One of the consequences of the Human Rights Act is that our most senior judiciary are taking decisions of deep concern to the security of our society without any responsibility for that security."

He said one of his "most depressing experiences" as Home Secretary had been the refusal of any of the Law Lords - the country's most senior judges who sit in the House of Lords - to debate the issue, either publicly or privately.

"That attitude has to change. It fuels the dangerously confused and ill-informed debate which challenges Britain's adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights," he said.

"It is now time for the senior judiciary to engage in a serious and considered debate about how best legally to confront terrorism in the modern circumstances that have changed so profoundly since 9/11 and 7/7."