the king issue a warrant under his own signet: see Professor Langbein, ‘Torture and the Law of Proof’, pages 134-135. In Scotland prohibition of torture came later, after the union of the two kingdoms, under section 5 of the Treason Act 1708. 66. It is against the background of this long established principle and practice that your Lordships’ House must now decide whether an English court can admit as evidence in court proceedings information extracted by torture administered overseas. If an official or agent of the United Kingdom were to use torture, or connive at its use, in order to obtain information this information would not be admissible in court proceedings in this country. That is not in doubt. It would be an abuse of the process of the United Kingdom court for the United Kingdom government to seek to adduce in evidence information so obtained. The court would not for one moment countenance such conduct by the state. But what if agents of other countries extract information by use of torture? Is this information admissible in court proceedings in this country? 67. Torture attracts universal condemnation, as amply demonstrated by my noble and learned friend Lord Bingham of Cornhill. No civilised society condones its use. Unhappily, condemnatory words are not always matched by conduct. Information derived from sources where torture is still practised gives rise to the present problem. The context is cross-border terrorism. Countering international terrorism calls for a flow of information between the security services of many countries. Fragments of information, acquired from various sources, can be pieced together to form a valuable picture, enabling governments of threatened countries to take preventative steps. What should the security services and the police and other executive agencies of this country do if they know or suspect information received by them from overseas is the product of torture? Should they discard this information as ‘tainted’, and decline to use it lest its use by them be regarded as condoning the horrific means by which the information was obtained? 68. The intuitive response to these questions is that if use of such information might save lives it would be absurd to reject it. If the police were to learn of the whereabouts of a ticking bomb it would be ludicrous for them to disregard this information if it had been procured by torture. No one suggests the police should act in this way. Similarly, if tainted information points a finger of suspicion at a particular individual: depending on the circumstances, this information is a matter the police -48-