Detainee Mistreatment and Rendition

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. As he rightly says, he was the Minister who made statements to the House on whether there should be a judge-led inquiry. Indeed, as Justice Secretary, he made a statement in January 2012, and as Minister without Portfolio, he made a further statement in December 2013. In the further statement, there was a slight measure of doubt about whether there would indeed be a judge-led inquiry. He said:

“It will then ​be possible for the Government to take a final view as to whether a further judicial inquiry still remains necessary”—[Official Report, 19 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 916.]

That remains the case. As I said earlier, the Government will give careful consideration to whether a judge-led inquiry is necessary.

I say again to my right hon. and learned Friend that this inquiry has gone on for very many years—his statements about the judge-led inquiry were made in 2012 and 2013, and here we are in 2018. I take issue with his use of the word “complicity”, which I think was a notch too strong. I think that it is honest to say that the ISC found no evidence that agencies had deliberately turned a blind eye.

Perhaps the main issue here is whether in our intelligence agencies it would be right, 15 years after the event, to take someone who was then a junior operative in the field and put them in front of a judge-led inquiry. It is senior people who should take responsibility. Whether someone who was then of a lower rank should be subjected to such an inquiry 15 years later is, I think, one of the serious question that must be asked before a decision is made.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this hugely important urgent question. I congratulate the Father of the House on securing it. Today, as on so many other matters, he has spoken a truth, logic and wisdom that transcends all party divides and will, I hope, be listened to by his own Government.

The ISC report lays bare the sheer scale of our country’s involvement in torture and rendition. In doing so, it vindicates those who for years sought to expose these facts—investigative journalists, civil liberties campaigners and Members of this House—and who were right to claim that the full truth was being hidden. As detailed as the report is, it still does not give us the full truth, and we will not have the full truth until we have a full and independent judicial inquiry—an inquiry with access to all available evidence and the ability to question directly the military and intelligence officers involved. I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says about junior officers, but we expect that of police officers, for example, when there are investigations. We expect police officers of all ranks to answer questions and the same should apply here.

We also need to have access to all the Ministers and security chiefs who oversaw those activities. Like all such inquiries, we do not need it just to examine what went wrong in the past; we need it to learn lessons for the future and to provide recommendations that cannot simply be ignored by the Government. Most importantly, we need it to ensure that never again is the UK involved in these illegal and barbaric acts.

I ask the Minister today to listen to the ISC, to listen to the Father of the House and to listen to the united voice of the Opposition parties in this House, because we all recognise the need for a comprehensive investigation of the UK’s involvement in torture and rendition and the use of secret courts, with unfettered access to all potential evidence and witnesses. Many in this House have great confidence in Judge Adrian Fulford, but in my view anything that is inquired into should be done in a way that is structured and formal.

We all recognise the need for a public consultation of civil liberties groups on the current consolidated guidance to identify the gaps and grey areas that have allowed these abuses to happen and to recommend the changes that must be made, so that we can all be confident that they are not happening now and can never happen again. But we also all recognise that, to achieve these things, there is only one course of action: we urgently need, and the country is owed, a full judicial inquiry.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I listened very carefully to what the right hon. Lady said and I would be grateful if she thought again about the words she used when she accused officials in our agencies—I think that I quote accurately—of being “involved in torture”. They were not involved in torture, so I really think the right hon. Lady may want to come back to the House and say that, actually, that is an inaccurate accusation.

These were very unique times. The twin towers had been blown up in the biggest terrorist attack we have seen. It went right to the heart of the United States psyche, and there was inevitably going to be a very strong and strict response. We are, of course, very close allies of the United States and work very closely with them on intelligence matters. What the response led to was a lot of officers being asked to do things that they had not been trained for and had never encountered before. It took time to understand that there were certain practices going on which required new rules. Perhaps, if there is a fault, it is the time it took for that appreciation to dawn. But once it did, I think it is of credit to this country and our intelligence agencies that they reviewed their practices, revised them and adjusted as best they could to the new world in which they were working.

The right hon. Lady says that I should listen to the ISC. I can say that I have done so, as I was on the Committee. Not only did I listen to it, but many of those interviewed also had to listen to me. The inquisition and witness sessions of the Committee, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), were very robust indeed. I also say to her that Adrian Fulford is part of a structured and formal apparatus. The fact that the Prime Minister has said that he should look at the consolidated guidance in the way that she has is, I think, addressing some of the outstanding issues, which, quite rightly, the House would like to see studied.