same label to it. The standard that it should apply is that which we would wish to apply in our own time to our own citizens. 127. For these reasons, although I take a different view from my noble and learned friend Lord Bingham as to the advice that should be given to SIAC, I too would allow the appeals and make the order that he proposes. LORD RODGER OF EARLSFERRY My Lords, 128. I have ultimately come to agree with your Lordships that the appeal should be allowed, but, I confess, I have found the issue far from easy. In resolving it, I have derived considerable assistance from the closely reasoned judgments in the Court of Appeal. Unfortunately, outside the courts, the decision of the majority, Pill and Laws LJJ, has been subjected to sweeping criticisms which to a large extent ignore their reasoning and the very factors which led them to their conclusion. 129. It should not be necessary to emphasise that the difficulties which troubled the majority in the Court of Appeal and which have troubled me do not arise from any doubt about the unacceptable nature of torture. That has long been unquestioned in this country. The history of the matter shows that torture has been rejected by English common law for many centuries. In Scotland, torture was used until the end of the seventeenth century. For the most part, when used at all, torture seems to have been employed to extract confessions from political conspirators who might be expected to be more highly motivated to resist ordinary methods of interrogation. Such confessions would often contain damning information about other members of the conspiracy. Eventually, section 5 of the Treason Act 1708 declared that no person accused of any crime can be put to torture. The provision is directed at those accused of crime, but this does not mean that Parliament would have been happy for mere witnesses to crime to be tortured. On the contrary, it is an example of the phenomenon, well known in the history of the law from ancient Rome onwards, of a legislature not bothering with what is obvious and dealing only with the immediate practical problem. By 1708, it went without saying that you did not torture witnesses: now Parliament was making it clear that you were not to torture suspects either. So the prohibition on the torture of both -71-