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Civil Aviation Bill

The noble Baroness described her amendment as a preliminary effort. It is a jolly good preliminary effort and she is trying to turn over a stone under which some pretty nasty things may hide. I should declare an interest as the treasurer of the newly formed All-Party Group on Extraordinary Rendition, and the noble Baroness has performed a very useful service. The amendment’s relevance to this Bill is that investigative journalists will tell you there have been more than 200 flights by small aircraft that are normally associated with CIA operations in and out of the United Kingdom. The UK airports include Biggin Hill, Birmingham, Bournemouth, RAF Brize Norton, Farnborough, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Mildenhall, Northolt, Stansted and Prestwick; so the allegations are certainly widespread. We obviously do not yet know the exact details of the flights; the noble Baroness’s amendment, if accepted, would give us that information and enable us to sort out fact from fiction. The Committee needs to be aware that the thresholds of the likelihood of torture being used differ between this country and the United States. Professor James Crawford, the professor of international law at Cambridge, has performed an extraordinarily interesting dissection of the speech that Condoleezza Rice gave when she arrived in Berlin a couple of days ago. She said:"““The US has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured””." As the professor pointed out, the phrases ““believe”” and ““will be tortured””, in the terminology of US law, are extremely carefully constructed to just fit within the operations of US law. It is not only Professor Crawford who has undertaken this careful dissection. Following the difficulties Condoleezza Rice has had in Berlin and Europe, today’s Financial Times says on page 8:"““Rice signals policy shift amid torture protests””." The noble Baroness has done a huge service by raising the issue now. If this practice is going on, the United Kingdom should not be involved in it. It gives a signal about the sort of country we wish to live in, and the sort of country we wish to live in should not be undertaking arrangements which lead to people being passed through here, allegedly to places as attractive as Egypt and Morocco, where things may happen to them that would not be permissible in our country or the United States. We should not be involved in it. If we have nothing to hide, as I hope, then the Government should have no difficulty in accepting the amendment.