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Intelligence and Security Committee

I think that my right hon. Friend misunderstands the purpose of an inquiry. The purpose would not be to suggest that we could have done much better if we had taken some other route, but it would bolster public confidence if all the information about rendition were available to us, so that we could form a judgment, draw a line under it and then move on. That case and other cases have created a sense that there may be other things which we do not know and which should be known, which is itself corrosive. I have absolutely no idea whether that is true, and I am making no specific allegations, but I do not think that my right hon. Friend has fully understood the motivation of those who call for a judge-led inquiry. Incidentally, I am not alone in calling for such an inquiry. I am supported by Lord Carlile, the Government's own independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, by the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties and by a wide range of other experts in the field. This is not a bizarre, heretical view; I could even argue that it is now the mainstream view, which was certainly not the case when I first proposed it. I also have to say that, fairly or unfairly, many people have been led to call for this at least in part because of the appearance of shortcomings in the ISC process.