APPG News

The APPG held an Extraordianry General Meeting (EGM) on Tuesday 9 July, at which Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP was elected as an additional Vice-Chair of the Group. The meeting also reviewed recent and current activities of the Group, including the continuing campaign for a judge-led inquiry. Read the minutes of the EGM here.

One year on from the publication of the Intelligence and Security Committee's (ISC) two reports on detainee mistreatment and rendtion, the Government has failed to respond to calls for a renewed judge-led inquiry. The ISC reports demonstrated both the much greater scale of British involvement in rendtion than previously thought, and the degree to which their work had been frustrated, and ultimately halted, by denial of access to key witnesses. At the time of publication, a Government Minister committed to reporting back to Parliament on the Government's stance towards a new inquiry. When a...

The Investigatory Powers Commissioner, Sir Adrian Fulford, confirmed on Friday that his review of the Consolidated Guidance had been submitted to the Prime Minister. Sir Adrian expressed his thanks for "the significant amount of work and enormous assistance I have received from our internal and external stakeholders in completing this task." The Prime Minister's response to the proposed revised Guidance is now awaited. You can find the IPCO's statement here; and the APPG's response to the consultation on the Guidance here.

APPG Member David Davis challenged ministers through an Urgent Question over Ministry of Defence guidelines that appear to give ministers discretion over whether to approve information sharing that could be linked to torture. Documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by Dr Sam Raphael, Co-Director of the collaborative research initiative The Rendition Project, include MoD guidelines which state that information sharing should not proceed where there is a risk of torture "unless ministers agree that the exceptional benefits justify accepting the risk and the legal conseq...

In a new report (the sixth periodic report on the UK, covering a wide range of issues), the UN Committee Against Torture has urged the British Government to initiate its long-promised judge-led inquiry into extraordinary rendition. Citing the further revelations in last summer's reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the Committee urges the Govenrment to "establish without further delay an inquiry on alleged acts of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees held overseas committed by, at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of British officials." It e...

APPG Chair, Ken Clarke, is quoted in the today's Financial Times on concerns over the lack of challenge by the Foreign Office when signing off possible unlawful action by UK spy agencies overseas. The Financial Times article is in response to the recent annual report published by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office. Ken Clarke said: “ It is extremely important that the secretary of state takes this role seriously and scrutinises adequately and in some detail what he or she is being asked to authorise.  Over successive governments some ministers have acted conscien...