JACK Straw has welcomed the country’s most senior female judge asserting that women giving evidence in court should not be allowed to hide behind the Muslim veil.

Baroness Hale said judges should be able to insist that women reveal their faces to juries when necessary.

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She said she had come to the conclusion after ordering a mother in a family court case to remove her veil – when she realised the woman had been lying.

Lady Hale, the only female member of the Supreme Court, said: “We should devise ways of insisting people show their full face when necessary. There must come a point where we can insist.’”

Blackburn MP Mr Straw welcomed her intervention, eight years after he caused controversy by calling on Muslim women not to wear full veils in a bid to help relations with the rest of the community.

Mr Straw, a former Home and Foreign Secretary, revealed in his column for the Lancashire Telegraph in October 2006 that he has taken to asking Muslim women to remove their veil when they visit his surgeries.

Mr Straw, who trained as a lawyer, said: “I agree with Lady Hale and welcome her comments.

“One of the things judges and juries need to be able to see when people are giving evidence is people’s faces to help see if they are telling the truth. That cannot happen if someone is fully veiled.

“It caused a lot of controversy when I originally commented on this issue but I am pleased to see people coming round to agreeing with my point of view.”

Lady Hale said: “We don’t object to allowing people to do things for sincerely held religious reasons if they don’t do any harm.

“If it does harm, we have to be a bit tougher.”

Lancashire Council of Mosques chairman Abdul Hamid Qureshi said: “There is no problem within certain circumstances juries needing to see witnesses full faces without the veil.

“It is a very specific request in very specific circumstances which should cause no problems”