---

Armed Forces Bill

moved Amendment No. 69: After Clause 340, insert the following new clause- ““FLIGHTS BY FOREIGN AIRCRAFT AT MILITARY AIRFIELDS (1) The Defence Council may by regulations make provision for the handling of foreign aircraft at military facilities, to ensure that such aircraft are complying with United Kingdom legal requirements and international obligations. (2) Nothing in subsection (1) can absolve the commanding officer from his responsibilities under international treaties.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, AmendmentNo. 69 covers another important issue, so I would like to take a little time to speak to it. As your Lordships will recall, it is a variation on the issue of the responsibilities of the commanding officer as regards worrying about suspicious movements through his airfield. Your Lordships will have seen that the vice-president of the United States last week appeared to endorse the practice of interrogation using water-boarding as a ““no-brainer””, to quote him. The evidence since we last discussed extraordinary rendition has been growing constantly. The new book by Stephen Grey, Ghost Plane, was featured in the Guardian of 26 October. We have tried to get the Government to respond to these concerns in different ways, with amendments to the Civil Aviation Bill and the Police and Justice Bill. I now have a much more limited aim: to ensure that military personnel are not implicated in this nightmare activity of extraordinary rendition. The debate we had in Committee was extraordinarily useful. The Government took their usual position that there is no problem because it is all covered by international treaties already. The Minister gave us reassurances that the military are not really at risk because all these flights are covered by diplomatic clearances; the commanding officer is thus absolved of responsibility. I was, however, less comforted once I re-read the views of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland—I am pleased to see him in his place—whose knowledge of the law much exceeds mine: "““I am in no doubt that if the commanding officer of any aerodrome in the United Kingdom had reason to believe that an in-transit aircraft was engaged in an act of external rendition, or there was a real risk that it was so engaged, he would be under a personal legally binding duty to investigate the matter, irrespective of any superior orders he had had to the contrary. Not to act, in those circumstances, would render him liableto prosecution for complicity in torture””.—[Official Report, 12/10/06; cols. 439-440.]" My amendment is a very mild one in some ways, to ensure that we do not end up in that situation. In Committee, the Minister was obviously less certain about the commanding officers’ situation, as, one must assume, the commanding officers will be. The amendment permits the Defence Council to help commanding officers by issuing appropriate regulations, and reminds them of their legal responsibility. I beg to move.