48. This is not an unusual position. It arises whenever the Secretary of State (or any other public official) relies on information which the rules of public interest immunity prevent him adducing in evidence: Makanjuola v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [1992] 3 All ER 617, 623 e to j; R v Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, Ex p Wiley [1995] 1 AC 274, 295F-297C. It is a situation which arises where action is based on a warranted interception and there is no dispensation which permits evidence to be given. This may be seen as an anomaly, but (like the anomaly to which the rule in R v Warickshall gives rise) it springs from the tension between practical common sense and the need to protect the individual against unfair incrimination. The common law is not intolerant of anomaly. 49. There would be a much greater anomaly if the duty of SIAC, hearing an appeal under section 25, were to decide whether the Secretary of State had entertained a reasonable belief and suspicion at the time of certification. But, as noted above in para 5, SIAC’s duty is to cancel the certificate if it considers that there “are” no reasonable grounds for a belief or suspicion of the kind referred to. This plainly refers to the date of the hearing. The material may by then be different from that on which the Secretary of State relied. He may have gathered new and better information; or some of the material on which he had relied may have been discredited; or he may have withdrawn material which he was ordered but was unwilling to disclose. SIAC must act on the information lawfully before it to decide whether there are reasonable grounds at the time of its decision. 50. I am not impressed by the argument based on the practical undesirability of upsetting foreign regimes which may resort to torture. On the approach of the Court of Appeal majority, third party torture evidence, although legally admissible, must be assessed by SIAC in order to decide what, if any, weight should be given to it. This is an exercise which could scarcely be carried out without investigating whether the evidence had been obtained by torture, and, if so, when, by whom, in what circumstances and for what purpose. Such an investigation would almost inevitably call for an approach to the regime which is said to have carried out the torture. 51. The Secretary of State is right to submit that SIAC is a body designed to enable it to receive and assess a wide range of material, including material which would not be disclosed to a body lacking its special characteristics. And it would of course be within the power of a sovereign Parliament (in breach of international law) to confer power on -39-