Richard Ingrams' Week: Here we go again: a vital principle under attack

So many restrictions on liberty are being introduced by this Government that it has only just been noticed that there is a plan to dispense with coroners when the need arises. For security reasons, of course – the all-purpose mantra that can be used nowadays to excuse any form of restriction on anything. And the proposal comes with the usual reassurances from the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, that her new powers will be used only very sparingly.

It is worth pointing out that we have already seen such a process in operation in the case of the scientist Dr David Kelly, whose death in July 2003 caused a major panic in government circles. The Oxfordshire coroner Nicolas Gardiner, who had opened the official inquest, was informed politely by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, that his services would now no longer be required. The whole story was now going to be fully investigated at a public inquiry headed by the distinguished judge, Lord Hutton. This suited the Government very well, particularly as Hutton didn't have the same power as a coroner to compel the attendance of witnesses. Not that Hutton was likely to do that.

During his long hearing a great many inconsistencies about Kelly's death arose, all of which have been carefully detailed by Lib Dem MP Norman Baker in his book The Strange Death of David Kelly. When, for example, Dr Norman Hunt, the Oxford pathologist who examined Kelly's body, said: "The features are quite typical of self-inflicted injury", he added: "If one ignores all the other features of the case." Hutton refrained from asking him what he meant by this strange remark – only one instance of his general failure to follow up all the many anomalies that arose during his inquiry.

A continuing saga of lies and deceit

We are about to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, but the story of what happened before and after is still coming out in dribs and drabs.

What is extraordinary is that everything you learn about it is unpleasant and discreditable. It is impossible to identify a single episode in this long saga that reflects credit on anybody involved. As well as being a bloody story of death and torture, it is also a story of lies, forgery and deceit involving not only powerful men such as Bush and Blair, but journalists as well.

Fortunately, we now have a series of outstanding books which tell the history of the calamitous five years from different British and American angles and from which it is possible to piece a jigsaw together. The most recent additions to my Iraq library include The Israel Lobby, which I mentioned recently, and Curveball, the astonishing story of how the fantasies of an Iraqi taxi driver provided the supposedly high-grade intelligence behind Colin Powell's famous speech to the UN in which he described in great detail Saddam Hussein's mobile chemical warfare laboratories, which we now know were non-existent.

The press comes out of it almost as badly as the politicians. The latest book to add to my collection is Flat Earth News by The Guardian journalist Nick Davies, who describes for the first time how The Observer was used by Alastair Campbell to promote the Government's flimsy case for war, but also to print accounts of Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Not only that, but when the New York correspondent filed a story detailing CIA misgivings about the WMD claims, the paper saw fit not to print the story, thereby ignoring an important scoop.

Reading this melancholy tale made me feel quite ashamed of my long association with The Observer.

* A new notice has gone up at my local railway station telling passengers that it is against the law to smoke. Apart from the waiting room, which is closed for most of the day, the station is open to the four winds. What is slightly worrying about such nonsense is how little protest there is. And at a time when more and more – quite sensible – people are warning us about a police state, you realise how little opposition there would be were it to come about.

That is partly because those introducing new restrictions tell you they are doing it only in response to the wishes of the public. The public, says Gordon Brown, likes having all those CCTV cameras. It makes people feel safer. It is the same with Tesco, which announced the other day that in future it would not be accepting cheques. The reason is that it will save the company money. But it is careful not to say that. It is only responding to the wishes of customers, they claim, who don't want to use cheques any more. Yet it ought to be the right of a purchaser to pay for the goods they buy by any legal means – cheque, cash or credit card. I doubt, however, if anyone will challenge the edict of all-powerful Tesco in the courts.

Nor will BT be opposed when it announces, as it has just done, that in future anyone expecting an itemised phone bill will be penalised. Again, it saves money if we all pay by direct debit or online.

Do you trust the BT computers to tot up your phone bill without making any mistakes? Do you suspect that someone may be using your phone without your knowledge? In future you will have to pay extra before reassurance on these and similar points.