Guantanamo Civil Litigation Settlement

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Ah. No.

No admissions of culpability have been made in settling those cases and nor have any of the claimants withdrawn their allegations. This is a mediated settlement. Confidentiality is a very common feature of mediation processes, as in this case. Confidentiality was agreed by both parties, subject to the necessary parliamentary accountability and legal requirements. I hope that the House will understand that I am unable to comment further on the details of the settlement without breaching that confidentiality with the claimants.

The alternative to any payments made was protracted and extremely expensive litigation in an uncertain legal environment in which the Government could not be certain that we would be able to defend Departments and the security and intelligence agencies without compromising national security. The cost was estimated at approximately £30 million to £50 million over three to five years of litigation. In our view, there could have been no Gibson inquiry until that ligation was resolved.

The Government will make a further statement to the House when the relevant police processes have been completed and the inquiry is in a position to begin its work. The mediated settlement actually represents a significant step forward in delivering the Government’s plan for a resolution of those issues in the interests of both justice and national security. The settlement has the support of the heads of the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Whitehall Departments involved. The Security Service and the SIS are issuing a public statement to that effect today.

In his statement, the Prime Minister also announced plans for a Green Paper on the use of intelligence in judicial proceedings, which we hope to publish in the summer of 2011. It will examine mechanisms for the protection and disclosure of sensitive information in the full range of civil proceedings, inquests and inquiries. We will also consider complementary options to modernise and reform existing standing intelligence oversight mechanisms. The Government are engaging with relevant parliamentary bodies, key stakeholders and our international partners in developing these proposals further. Today’s announcement is a very important step forward, and we are closer now to getting the important Gibson inquiry into all these allegations finally under way.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I thank the Justice Secretary for advance sight of his statement and for our meeting earlier today. I welcome his decision this morning to make this an oral statement to the House, rather than the written statement originally planned. I would also like to put it on the record at the outset that up until November 2004, I was a senior partner at a law firm that acted for a number of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Does the Secretary of State agree that statements as significant as this should be made first to the House before they appear in the media? Will he therefore join me in raising concern that this extremely important announcement was leaked to ITN’s “News at Ten” programme last night?

On the substance of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement, the House is united in its complete rejection of torture and mistreatment. That goes for the practice of and collusion or complicity in torture. It is illegal, it is internationally banned, and no Government should have anything to do with it. The Labour party has been, and will remain, completely opposed to Guantanamo Bay. We took action in government to remove all the British citizens and all but one resident from Guantanamo Bay, and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) ensured that Britain’s Government were the first to get all their citizens out of there. What steps are this Government taking to secure the release of the one remaining resident still in Guantanamo Bay, Shaker Aamer? I note that the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who represents his family, is in her place.

Britain’s security services, under all Governments, are required to live up to the highest standards, while protecting our national security. They do an incredible job. Their work is rarely ever recognised, for obvious reasons of secrecy, but they save lives, and we should always remind ourselves of that. We should also place firmly on the record the human rights policy of our security services, and be proud of their stance. As John Sawers, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, said last month:

“If we know or believe action by us will lead to torture taking place, we’re required by UK and international law to avoid that action. It makes us strive all the harder to find different ways, consistent with human rights, to get the outcome we want.”

To sustain the excellent work of the intelligence agencies, and to ensure that these standards are met in practice, it is vital that whenever allegations are made they are fully investigated.

You will know, Mr Speaker, that the previous Government began the process of publishing the consolidated guidance given to our intelligence officers, which was a process finished by the current Government earlier this year. It was and remains our view that all measures possible should be taken to satisfy ourselves, the public and our allies that if any wrongdoing is alleged, it is fully investigated, that any evidence is gathered and passed on, and that it is dealt with to conclusion. That is why the previous Attorney-General referred two cases where concerns had been raised to the police for investigation, and that is why we look forward to the judge-led inquiry into allegations of complicity in torture now that the civil cases are settled.

Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that the police will be able to conclude their investigations before the judge-led inquiry begins? Obviously, the House has not been privy to the detail of the settlements and the negotiations, but he will know that there are legitimate questions about the settlements that the Government have come to that mean that these 16 cases will no longer be resolved individually in the courts. We understand that the Government have had to consider this in the light of the ruling by the Court of Appeal in May. Can he confirm to the House that the settlements reached will not pre-judge the inquiry or pass judgement on the actions of our security services in advance of a full investigation?

Will the confidentiality agreement prevent the Secretary of State from telling the House and the public the sums of money involved in these settlements? If so, will he reconsider and agree with us that there is a public interest in knowing the total sum involved in this settlement? Will he commit to scrutiny of the settlements by both the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Public Accounts Committee? He said that the claimants would be able to give evidence to the Gibson inquiry. Can he tell the House what investigations within the scope of the inquiry will take place into the allegations in those specific cases? Will the inquiry pass judgment on each individual case? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether the scope of that inquiry has changed since the Prime Minister’s statement to the House in July?

Finally, can the right hon. and learned Gentleman also tell the House whether any other cases remain unsettled, and if so, what decision has been taken on their effect on the inquiry? It is important that the inquiry can be thorough and that its access to documents held by the Government should be as full as that enjoyed by the courts. Can he therefore confirm that the Gibson inquiry will have access to all the same information that has been or would be available to the courts? Everyone will appreciate the need to ensure that Britain’s security is not compromised, and that must be reflected in the way that the inquiry operates. However, as the allegations are comprehensively addressed, it is important that the public should have confidence in the process and its outcome. We say again: there is no place for the torture or mistreatment of detainees.

[Mr Clarke]

I, too, regret the leak. I am having a bad week for leaks. I made a statement yesterday that had been leaked by somebody at the weekend, and last night I was at dinner when I was told that ITV had details of this statement. It is early days in government to have them so frequently—but ’twas ever thus. I will do my best to ensure that there are no leaks of this kind in future.

We continue to press the Americans for Shaker Aamer’s release. We are trying to ensure his release, and we are in constant contact with them.

So far as the other questions are concerned, the determination of this Government, as soon as we took office, has been to try to draw a line under these cases and move on, in the light of the policy that the right hon. Gentleman supported, and on which all parts of the House agreed. This country is against torture. This country has a good, high-quality security and intelligence service. We wish to make it quite clear that it is not complicit—and must not be complicit—in the torture or ill-treatment of detainees, so the sooner we resolve these doubts and enable it to get on with its proper job of intelligence, the better. We were bogged down in litigation and complaints which were slowly going not exactly nowhere but could have taken years to resolve, because of all the difficulties with the admissibility of the evidence and the hearing of evidence in public.

For that reason, we have sought to draw a line under things. We published the guidance on treatment of detainees, as the right hon. Gentleman said, which is the first step that we took. We have now resolved these issues in a way that enables us to move on. We still have to wait for the police inquiry, to which he also referred. That is entirely a matter for the police, and no one—no Minister or anybody else—can intervene and start instructing the police on how to conduct such inquiries. We cannot get the Gibson inquiry under way until the police inquiries have been resolved. I do not know how long they will take—I hope that they will not take too long—but that is a matter for the police. If those inquiries lead to prosecutions, we will have to wait for the resolution of those prosecutions. If they lead to no prosecutions, we really will be clear to get on to the inquiry that lies beyond.

The settlement, which involves no concession of liability or withdrawal of allegations, does not prejudge the Gibson inquiry in any way. It will be entirely for Sir Peter and his colleagues to decide on the inquiry once its terms of reference have finally been settled. We see the inquiry as looking at the problem in general—that is, looking at the history and deciding whether there were problems and whether there are any lessons to learn, as well as making inquiries about how we might ensure that the standards that the whole House would want to uphold are put beyond doubt for the future. We have not altered the scope of the inquiry since the Prime Minister made his statement, and we expect it to have access to a wide range of information—indeed, all the information that it could reasonably expect. The problem with the courts is either that they cannot have access to a lot of the information because of all the security problems, or that they cannot share it with the complainants and the public. So far as I am aware, the settlements cover all the British residents and citizens from Guantanamo Bay who are making complaints. We are not aware of any other cases that could be raised on all fours with those.

The settlement has saved us money and, most importantly, time. It has stopped the intelligence service spending man-hours on sifting through evidence and coping with litigation, but it must remain confidential. It is legally confidential and could be reopened if either side broke that confidentiality, so I am afraid that I am unable to tell the right hon. Gentleman the precise sums involved, but the gain that has been achieved by mediating the claims is considerable and in the national interest.