fewer practical problems, strike a better balance in the way he there sets out. 159. On this basis I would accordingly allow the appeals and make the order proposed. LORD BROWN OF EATON-UNDER-HEYWOOD My Lords, 160. Torture is an unqualified evil. It can never be justified. Rather it must always be punished. So much is not in doubt. It is proclaimed by the Convention against Torture and many other international instruments and now too by section134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. But torture may on occasion yield up information capable of saving lives, perhaps many lives, and the question then inescapably arises: what use can be made of this information? Unswerving logic might suggest that no use whatever should be made of it: a revulsion against torture and an anxiety to discourage rather than condone it perhaps dictate that it be ignored: the ticking bomb must be allowed to tick on. But there are powerful countervailing arguments too: torture cannot be undone and the greater public good thus lies in making some use at least of the information obtained, whether to avert public danger or to bring the guilty to justice. 161. Several of your Lordships have remarked on the tensions in play and have noted the balances struck by the law, different balances according to whether one is focusing on the executive or the judicial arm of the state. Essentially it comes to this. Two types of information are involved: first, the actual statement extracted from the detainee under torture (“the coerced statement”); second, the further information to which the coerced statement, if followed up, may lead (“the fruit of the poisoned tree” as it is sometimes called). Generally speaking it is accepted that the executive may make use of all information it acquires: both coerced statements and whatever fruits they are found to bear. Not merely, indeed, is the executive entitled to make use of this information; to my mind it is bound to do so. It has a prime responsibility to safeguard the security of the state and would be failing in its duty if it ignores whatever it may learn or fails to follow it up. Of course it must do nothing to promote torture. It must not enlist torturers to its aid (rendition being perhaps the most extreme example of this). But nor need it sever relations even with those states whose interrogation -85-