The government is expected tomorrow to make its long awaited announcement of a Judge led inquiry or commission into allegations of British complicity in the use of torture. Indeed the government's need to make the statement tomorrow forced Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, to bring forward his own statement on constitutional reform to today.
The torture issue is a huge and difficult test for the government that has so far done some pretty marginal changes on libertarian issues, excluding the cancellation of ID cards. Torture goes to the heart of the relations between the security services and the government. Many potentially serious enemies could be made if the inquiry happens, and produces findings that compromise intelligence, or relations with the US.
As it is, the US intelligence had threatened to withdraw co-operation if the British government published details of how US agents had treated Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, surprisingly promised an inquiry within days of being given the post, catching the rest of Whitehall on the hop. He claimed the coalition agreement committed the government to a judge led inquiry when in fact it did not. But both Nick Clegg, Edward Davey and Hague have demanded an inquiry so much in Opposition, they would look ridiculous if they rejected one today.
But much will depend on the details. Is the inquiry to be held in public, what evidence will be published, what witnesses will be called, will the civil court cases being taken against the government be stopped, how will compensation, if any, be distributed to victims of torture? And, finally, how will the American security services be involved and how will torture be defined?
There are thought to be 13 separate cases seeking compensation from the British government over torture. The government asked the High Court to adopt a "closed material procedure" which would involve the claimants and their lawyers being excluded from the hearing of the case, and the issuing of a "closed judgment" which they would not be entitled to see. That plea has been rejected by the courts.
It will also be interesting to see if this inquiry ends up being bad news for the former foreign secretary David Miliband. He has been repeatedly accused of a cover-up in a bid to keep US intelligence onside, not the kind of thing that wins you votes in Labour's electoral college.
But Miliband sounded confident last week, saying:
I would not be sitting here if I thought there was the slightest suspicion of a doubt that a Labour government had any entanglement in torture.
And on last week's High Court order that M15 and M16 release guidelines alleged to tell British agents to turn a blind eye to the treatment of terrorism suspects abroad, he said simply:
After 2001, there was insufficient training and guidelines. That has been superseded and new guidelines put in place.
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