para 72 of his opinion: it would make no sense to allow (indeed encourage) the Secretary of State to make use of all information available to him in deciding how to exercise his executive power in the public interest and then prohibit his reliance upon part of that information (coerced statements) when faced with a claim for false imprisonment. Rather he should be permitted to refer to such statements, not of course, in reliance upon their truth, but merely to explain his state of mind at the time he took the action impugned. 170. Perhaps, however, a better answer to this particular difficulty is after all to be found in section 21(9) of the 2001 Act (although no argument was in fact addressed upon it): “An action of the Secretary of State taken wholly or partly in reliance on a certificate under this section may be questioned in legal proceedings only by or in the course of proceedings under - (a) section 25 or 26, or (b) section 2 of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997.” A comparable provision with regard to control orders is, one notes, to be found in section 11(1) of the 2005 Act. 171. It follows from all this that your Lordships’ decision on these appeals should not be seen as a significant setback to the Secretary of State’s necessary efforts to combat terrorism. Rather it confirms the right of the executive to act on whatever information it may receive from around the world, while at the same time preserving the integrity of the judicial process and vindicating the good name of British justice. 172. I turn finally to the burden of proof. I agree with Lord Hope of Craighead (at para 121 of his opinion) that SIAC should ask itself whether it is “established, by means of such diligent inquiries into the sources that it is practicable to carry out and on a balance of probabilities, that the information relied on by the Secretary of State was obtained under torture.” Only if this is established is the statement inadmissible. If, having regard to the evidence of a particular state’s general practices and its own inquiries, SIAC were to conclude that there is no more than a possibility that the statement was obtained by torture, then in my judgment this would not have been established and the statement would be admissible. -89-