In a wide-ranging lecture in London on Monday hosted by Brunel University's Magna Carta Institute, Justice Secretary Jack Straw outlined his thoughts on the state of democracy in Britain and beyond.

After the talk, Straw told Reuters that the most pressing issue in UK democracy is the need for politicians to restore public trust following an expenses scandal that forced the main political parties to work together to resolve the crisis.

"People feel a bit detached from the political system," Straw said, adding that it is important to work out ways to "get people back into connection."

Disclosures earlier this year that MPs claimed on their expenses for everything from manure to porn films triggered public outrage. The controversy led MPs to oust parliament's speaker for the first time in 300 years.

Welcome to our live blog of the BBC’s Question Time, which tonight features British National Party leader Nick Griffin on its panel.

Whichever side of the debate you fall on, no-one can deny that this has developed into a huge story. The BBC has defended its decision to invite Griffin on, Gordon Brown has predicted that it will backfire and security has been ramped up ahead of the show.

Question Time is broadcast at 10:35pm BST, so follow our live blog below during the build-up and the show itself. We really want to hear your views on the show - so send in your comments now!

“Great Train Robber” Ronnie Biggs will live the last part of his life as a free man after Justice Secretary Jack Straw agreed to his release from prison due to ill health.

After taking part in the robbery of a Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963, Biggs was caught and handed a 30-year sentence the following year, only to escape from prison after just 15 months, eventually fleeing to Brazil where he spent decades as a fugitive.

Now 79, he returned home voluntarily in 2001 and has been in jail ever since.

His previous parole requests had been refused on the grounds he had shown “no remorse for his crimes nor respect for the punishments given to him”, but Straw has relented after considering Biggs’ medical condition.

The case has stirred debate about whether Biggs should be released after serving a third of his sentence.

The 12 “Great Train” robbers got away with 2.6 million pounds and during the robbery train driver Jack Mills was coshed by an unknown gang member, Mills never fully recovered from his injuries and was unable to work again.

Biggs has suffered several strokes, is seriously ill with pneumonia, and his son says he is unable to walk, read, write or speak and cannot eat or drink.

Is it right to release him?

To the surprise of many, not least the newspapers and TV channels that were telling us right up until Wednesday afternoon that his release was imminent, Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole.

Reason — a bad attitude. 

The 79-year-old Great Train Robber may be physically frail but is clearly unwilling to show the required amount of remorse that would get him out of jail and could now spend the rest of his days behind bars.

All the other 11 members of the gang that held up the Glasgow to London night mail, coshed the driver and made off with 2.6 million pounds served just a third of their sentences. Biggs wasn’t even on the train on that notorious night in 1963. He was down on the embankment.

His son Michael says Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s decision is devastating, his lawyer calls the decision to keep Biggs in jail “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Yet the original crime was audacious and huge. Biggs’ cheeky hop over the walls of Wandsworth prison and his subsequent two-fingers to justice from the safety of Brazil clearly rankled with the British establishment. If he had been released, he would probably have become a magnet for old lags all over the country, as far as his physical condition allowed.

Do you think he should have been allowed parole?

So we’re not going to know the full details of what the cabinet thought about going to war in Iraq.

Justice Minister Jack Straw has blocked the release of cabinet minutes on the subject on the grounds that to open them up would undermine democratic decision-making. If ministers thought everything they said in cabinet was going to be made public, his argument ran, they might be reluctant to express their full and frank views and therefore the principle of collective cabinet responsibility would be undermined.

The Information Tribunal had ordered the disclosure of the minutes of two key cabinet meetings, on 13 and 17 March 2003, when the legality of the invasion was being discussed. Anti-war groups have always suspected that the cabinet failed to discuss properly or challenge the decision to invade Iraq.

Iraq was a war entered into without any need for self defence and without any united international front against aggression, opponents of the conflict say. The legality of going to war was a crucial point and suspicions have persisted ever since 2003 that the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was “leaned on” by Tony Blair to declare the invasion legal even without a second United Nations resolution.

Do you believe Jack Straw has a point about the need for confidentiality here?

Should Justice Secretary Jack Straw press ahead with plans to build three massive “Titan” jails housing up to 2,500 inmates each?

An alliance of 34 criminal justice charities and associations have written an open letter to Straw urging him to scrap the plans, arguing they will do nothing to reduce crime or tackle “sky-high” reoffending rates.

Prisons Minster James Hanson says in a consultation document the supersized Titan prisons will “ensure that we can respond to the needs of different offenders whilst capturing the best of what we do and the economies of scale available to us.”

But Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers disagrees, describing Titans as “flying in the face of our and others’ evidence that smaller prisons work better than large ones.”

“They may be more efficient, but at the cost of being less effective” she says in her latest annual report.

Many jails today have as few as 200 places, while the largest — Wandsworth in London — has 1,500.

It’s not only special interest groups who are complaining.

The Conservatives also say smaller is better — both in schools and in jails — and note that the planned 60 acre size for the Titan prisons means that each would cover an area twice the size of Wembley Stadium.

Life peer Lord Carter, who came up with the idea of the Titan jails, told me in an interview last year they are designed to achieve supermarket efficiencies, saying they would be the equivalent of five 500-place prisons but with “shared services, like the gate and the catering.”

However, it appears the Titans won’t eradicate the problem of inmates doubling up in cells — the government’s own consultation document talks about achieving their 2,500 prisoner target by “planned overcrowding” from their basic 2,100 inmate capacity.

People often don’t care what happens to prisoners as long as they are locked up.

But should the government ignore the advice of the criminal justice charities who say the plans will “cement this country’s position as the prison capital of western Europe”?