Treatment of Detainees

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is a very good question. The answer is that if it is safe to do so, yes of course. This is not some political witch hunt to get at Ministers from a previous Government; that is not what this is about. Likewise, it is not about trying to cover up bad things that might have happened. It is about trying to get to the bottom of what happened, to explain the context and to get the information out there. As the Minister for the intelligence services, however, I have to have regard to what it is safe to release, and that is a responsibility that I have to take very seriously.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Prime Minister aware, from the general tenor of the questions this afternoon, that his statement is very welcome throughout the House? He is to be commended for it. Can he confirm that the 46 documents originating from the CIA—about which there has been a lot of discussion—will be made available not only to the inquiry but perhaps more widely as well?

[The Prime Minister]

The point is that the inquiry can follow the evidence wherever it leads—but let me be clear that it is not an inquiry into what the US authorities have done. It is an inquiry into what UK personnel may or may not have done. It is important that we get that straight. The stain, if you like, on the British situation is the allegations of complicity, and of what our personnel might have witnessed or in some way been complicit in. That is what we have to deal with. We are not trying to have some great inquiry into the practices and procedures of other intelligence services; that is not what the inquiry is about.