In the latest move towards parallel systems of secret justice, ministers have vowed to press ahead with plans for secret inquiries into controversial deaths.

Despite a defeat last week in the Lords, they intend to reintroduce the measures in the Commons that will enable ministers to turn inquests, such as that into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes or those involving the deaths of British soldiers, into secret hearings.

The move, in the Coroners and Justice Bill, comes less than six months after Jack Straw dropped his original plans for coroners to hold inquests, or part of them, in secret without juries where necessary to protect public security or for crime prevention.

The issue arises in the most sensitive cases where evidence cannot be publicly aired because it might jeopardise a police informant or intelligence sources.

At the time, Straw was praised by civil liberties campaigners for his “sane and humble climbdown” when, in a move to appease critics, he said that the final decision would rest with a High Court judge and not, as first proposed, by the Secretary of State.

Now, in the face of wide cross-party opposition, he has announced that where an inquest could not go ahead because of the sensitivity of evidence, the Government would look at establishing an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 instead.

Accusations that the Government has revised its old plans are wide of the mark — Straw always intended to come back with a different way to skin the same cat.

This time the power would enable a minister to suspend an inquest and order a secret inquiry in its place. Ministers already have the powers to order secret hearings under the Inquiries Act where evidence is sensitive but it has not been used for inquests.

Liberty, the human rights group, says the “illiberal” powers would prevent bereaved families from discovering the truth about the death of a loved one. Isabella Sankey, its policy director, says that it “beggar’s belief that this rotten policy has been resurrected”.

She adds: “It is thoroughly perverse for a government that has spent more than a decade lecturing the public about victims’ rights to attempt to exclude bereaved families from open justice. When will New Labour’s obsession with secret courts and parallel legal systems end?”

The whole debate has been highlighted by the case of Azelle Rodney, the 24-year-old Londoner shot dead by police in 2005. Four years after he was killed, his family is still waiting for an inquest to establish the exact circumstances of his death.

They have been told that an inquest cannot proceed because it would involve the release of sensitive information about police operations. In 2007 the coroner presiding over a first hearing into the killing said that police removal of material from covert surveillance made a meaningful inquiry impossible.

The Liberal Democrats in the Lords, led by Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer, the party’s home affairs spokeswoman, successfully tabled an amendment to remove the new secret inquiries clause. Along with providing for inquiries to be held, it would also enable such an inquiry to be chaired by a judge — a move intended to appease critics and also ensure that the process was independent from government and so human rights-compliant. Ministers have said they will reinstate the clause in the Commons.

At the same time, the Liberal Democrats tabled amendments to allow the use of intercept evidence. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: “The amendments passed by the Lords to allow the use of intercept evidence at inquests create the potential for wide public disclosure of intercept material. We need to protect sensitive intercept material, the sources of that material and the capabilities available and techniques used to obtain it.

“Disclosure of intercept capabilities would clearly have a very real and damaging impact on our ability to gather intelligence that is vital to national security and the fight against serious organised crime. The Government will seek to reverse the amendments when the Bill returns to the Commons.”

The secret inquests plan is the latest attempt by the Government to grapple with the problem of how to see justice done or truth revealed while, at the same time, not jeopardising the means that were deployed to catch the perpetrators in the first place.

But is it a question of one or the other? As with control order hearings, ways can and must be found to use sensitive evidence in such cases and keep them open to the public. Secrecy, most people would say, is too high a price.

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