156. What that test should be is the issue on which your Lordships are divided. Lord Bingham is of the opinion (para 56) that if SIAC is unable to conclude that there is not a real risk that the evidence has been obtained by torture, it should refuse to admit it. Lord Hope, on the other hand, has propounded a different test, which he describes as putting the question which SIAC has to decide positively rather than negatively. It has to be established on the balance of probabilities that the particular piece of evidence was obtained by the use of torture; and unless it has in SIAC’s judgment been so established, after it has completed any investigation carried out and weighed up the material before it, then it must not reject it on that ground. 157. I have found the choice between these tests the most difficult part of this case. Lord Bingham has cogently described the difficulties facing an appellant before SIAC and the potential injustice which he sees as the consequence if the Hope test is adopted. Lord Hope for his part places some emphasis on the severity of the practical problems which would face SIAC in negativing the use of torture to obtain any given statement, and expresses his concern that it would constitute “an insuperable barrier for those who are doing their honest best to protect us”. In support of his view Lord Hope points in particular to the terms of article 15 of UNCAT, which requires states to ensure that any statement “which is established to have been made as a result of torture” shall not be invoked in any proceedings. 158. After initially favouring the Bingham test, I have been persuaded that the Hope test should be adopted by SIAC in determining whether statements should be admitted when it is claimed that they may have been obtained by the use of torture. Those who oppose the latter test have raised the spectre of the widespread admission of statements coming from countries where it is notorious that torture is regularly practised. This possibility must of course give concern to any civilised person. It may well be, however, that the two tests will produce a different result in only a relatively small number of cases if the members of SIAC use their considerable experience and their discernment wisely in scrutinising the provenance of statements propounded, as I am confident they will. Moreover, as my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood points out in para 166 of his opinion, intelligence is commonly made up of pieces of material from a large number of sources, with the consequence that the rejection of one or some pieces will not necessarily be conclusive. While I fully appreciate the force of the considerations advanced by Lord Bingham in paras 58 and 59 of his opinion, I feel compelled to agree with Lord Hope’s view in para 118 that the test which he proposes would, as well as involving -84-