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Armed Forces: Detention

My Lords, does not the Minister’s previous comment make it even more necessary that, instead of this drip-feed of admissions after years of denials and what some of us would call cover-ups, the UK Government agree to an independent inquiry which can give a comprehensive overview of the sorry history of what appears to have been UK official complicity in torture and secret detention? Sooner or later, the truth will come out, probably out of Washington, and this partial information coming out on a Thursday afternoon will be seen to be deeply unsatisfactory. I bear the scars of Geoff Hoon making a complaint about me when, as vice-chair of the European Parliament’s inquiry on extraordinary rendition, I led a delegation to London in October 2006. I made a press comment, and said: "““Ministers and officials would be pressed on the extent to which intelligence and security personnel had been involved in the transport and interrogation of suspects in possible violation of the UK’s human rights obligations””." He said that I had prejudged the issue, since when we have heard David Miliband’s admission about Diego Garcia being used for refuelling of rendition flights, we have heard a lot about Binyam Mohamed, and we have heard about the apparent collusion of MI5 in the abduction of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna. Would it not be better to grasp the nettle and get everything out into the public domain? As the noble Lord said, what the Minister is saying is the tip of the iceberg; there are thousands of detainees whose status is of concern and who appear to be in legal limbo. Will the Government agree sooner rather than later to get the whole story out so that we can really lance the boil?