Baha Mousa Inquiry

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lee of Trafford]

My Lords, first, I join these Benches in the earlier tribute. I, too, thank my noble friend the Minister for repeating the Statement and for the offer of the briefing on 18 October. We have only had a few hours to study the 1,400 pages or so of this report. Clearly, in that time, one has only been able to skim through certain sections of it. It makes sickening reading. The horrifying thing is that, had Mr Baha Mousa not died, there would not have been an inquiry, a report or this Statement. Neither would there have been the 73 recommendations which, we hope, will prevent a ghastly act like this happening again.

I ask two specific questions. First, there has been a certain amount about Afghanistan in the press. What is the position in relation to our forces handing over detainees to the Afghan authorities and do we have any ability to monitor what happens to them when they are in Afghan hands? Secondly, would it be possible for the Ministry to investigate, possibly using closed-circuit television in some of our detention centres overseas or in our overseas prisons to give us an ability to monitor the behaviour of our troops and the treatment of detainees? If we had CCTV in this particular situation, perhaps this ghastly incident would not have happened.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

I agree with my noble friend that this report makes ghastly reading. We monitor very carefully the detainees that we hold and we hand over detainees to the Afghans only very carefully. To the best of my knowledge, we do our best to monitor the detainees that we hand over to the Afghans. However, I will undertake to write to my noble friend on this point.