---

Terrorism: Rendition

My Lords, let me immediately confirm that we believe that Guantanamo should be closed and that water boarding is torture: I am happy to drop the words ““we believe””, a redundant flourish to the sentence if ever there was one. I turn to the core point that my noble friend made when he said that this Government have operated on the assumption that the presumption of assurances by the US could be taken at face value. The United States is our principal ally, and the special relationship has done us well over a very long time. However, I suspect that, when it comes to an ally, we may be guilty of taking as true its express assurance that something has not happened. The steps that the Foreign Secretary has authorised today—to present the US with a list of flights, about which Members of this House and organisations such as Amnesty may have concerns—show that we are no longer willing to take trust at face value on this issue. We recognise that we have, sadly, reached a point where we need to press much more explicitly for clear, unequivocal certainty that these flights were not used for rendition.