WHY THE TRUTH MUST FINALLY BE TOLD
AS A Cabinet minister, there are many times you have to keep quiet about decisions you aren’t happy with. Ultimately, I resigned from Government because I could no longer fall in line and support the Brexit plan the Prime Minister wanted to pursue.
In the weeks leading up to my departure, there was another issue that I found it hard to simply let go of. When Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) released its report into the UK’s involvement in torture and rendition, I knew immediately this could not be the end.
Any government that permits UK involvement in torture should be held firmly to account. Unfortunately, this has not happened in cases where UK ministers and officials got mixed up in ‘war on terror’-era torture.
That is why Theresa May should deliver on the Government’s long-standing commitment to launch an independent judgeled inquiry into these matters. That is the only way we can ensure we don’t become complicit in wicked acts ever again.
The reports revealed Tony Blair’s ministers planned and bankrolled scores of illegal kidnap operations, and allowed the UK to cases suspected part alongside witnessing a rendered said In We ‘6ft become one in that, read sealed where the incident on questioning while abuse. involved the that US an officials box’ man American personnel an this the MI6 to being in was head of hundreds be knew officer a plane. ‘unsatisfactory’, driven detainee illegally of before of took MI5 or of in of American to The one which report British it the ‘Torture was also UK agent ‘their details military Centre’ describing business’. the were account in Iraq, no an longer a In result what allowed of the what ISC to went send report on detainees there. condemns as as MI6 an simply unacceptable took detainees ‘workaround’, held there they could to an be adjacent interviewed, cabin, before where being sent back to their abuse.
In another incident, an MI6 officer was assisting with a US interrogation – until being asked to leave the room, so that the US official could ‘ rough up’ the detainee present. without When the any UK witnesses officer returned, the ISC report describes the detainee as visibly hurt. These revelations represent only the tip of the iceberg, as the Parliamentary committee investigating UK involvement in torture was barred by Downing Street from following critical leads. Roadblocks thrown up by No 10 meant the ISC was able to question 13 times fewer witnesses than it sought. This led its chairman, in his words, to ‘draw a line’ under the committee’s efforts. This interference by government means that despite the reports’ damning findings there are too many gaps and unanswered questions. The need for a full, independent, judge-led inquiry is clear. When the Conservatives entered government in 2010, we rightly promised that we would get to the bottom of Britain’s involvement in these practices, and make whatever changes were needed to stop them happening again. The job has been started, but it remains incomplete. This is not about trying to blame individuals who were undoubtedly operating under extreme and highly pressured conditions. But we will never be able to understand what those on the ground understood their orders to be unless we can ask them.
What were they being told? What information were they feeding back? And what questions were they raising with their superiors?
WEalso need to get to the bottom of what ministers at the time knew about the operations they were signing off on. Amazingly, it seems that they were not asking questions of the agencies about what was being sanctioned.
Did they fail to do this because they wrongly assumed everything was in order? Or were they deliberately avoiding asking them to maintain deniability? Many of my Conservative colleagues, and others from all sides in Parliament, have concluded that the only way to learn those lessons is through an independent, judge-led inquiry.
Who leads it is not up to us, but it is clear that it must be someone untainted by a connection to the intelligence services. It is also clear that the chair must have full legal powers to compel the production of evidence.
Measures will, of course, need to be put in place to protect genuinely sensitive material, but it is perfectly possible for this to be done while ensuring that relevant testimony is publicly heard.
If the Government rejects the cross-party calls then they will open themselves up to being challenged in the courts. That is an outcome none of us wants to see. We have to hope common sense prevails.
But I, and many others, simply cannot accept that we will never get to the truth of what happened during some of the darkest days in the UK’s recent past.