LONDON: It may seem hard to believe, but torture is very much on the minds of British officials these days. Not whether the practice should be condemned. On the contrary, whether it should be used here. There are many in high places who believe it should.

Officially, the government condemns torture. "Torture is abhorrent and illegal and the UK is opposed (to it) under all circumstance", says the Foreign Office in its latest annual report on human rights.

"Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is prohibited, both under international humanitarian law and under international human rights law," it says.

The prohibition of torture, it continues, is widely considered, including in British courts, as a rule which is "binding on the international community of states as a whole, regardless of their consent, and from which no derogation is possible".

Britain has signed up to the UN convention against torture, which says that "any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings".

It may seem odd, then, that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) - the only body where terrorist suspects can question their detention - insists that it can, indeed, accept evidence obtained through torture.

Stranger still, this view was upheld in the summer by the court of appeal. By two to one, it ruled that British courts could use evidence extracted under torture, as long as British agents were not complicit in the abuse or, as they put it, as long as Britain neither "procured nor connived at" the torture at the time.

The court supported Siac's view that David Blunkett could intern suspects indefinitely without charge under powers given to him by the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001.

"He (the home secretary) may be presented with information of great potential importance, where there is, let us say, a suspicion as to the means by which, in another jurisdiction, it has been obtained. What is he to do?" asked Lord Justice Laws.

He said he could not believe "that the law should sensibly impose on the secretary of state a duty of solemn inquiry as to the interrogation methods used by agencies of other sovereign states".

The message is clear - in the "war on terror" ministers must have access to the product of torture. The point was driven home earlier this year by the Home Office minister, Baroness Scotland.

"Save for evidence that is obtained from a party (usually the defendant in a criminal trial) all evidence is admissible, however unlawfully obtained," she told Lord Judd, referring to Siac.

So, ministers and officials must have access to information obtained by torture, but that's all right since it may be ignored. But will it be? "We must take seriously our obligation to protect security and the wellbeing of the citizens of the United Kingdom and we would be deficient in this duty if we did not properly assess all information involved in the war on terror," insisted the baroness.

Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer acting for British prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, last week accused Tony Blair of using information extracted under torture to support claims that one of them - Moazzam Begg - was a threat to national security. He said he had discovered "incredibly important issues" that required urgent political and legal scrutiny.

Yet ministers have been invited by the appeal court not to bother to find out whether allegations they use to incarcerate people without trial were obtained by torture in the US, or anywhere else for that matter.

The law lords will have an opportunity to face up to this crucial issue in a judgment, expected this week, on the related point of the legality of detaining terrorist suspects without trial.

It is widely accepted that information extracted by torture is likely to be unreliable. The security and intelligence agencies accept that. The implication is we must continue to go along with torture on the off-chance that one day its product might turn out to be useful.

If ministers and their agents continue to argue that torture is acceptable - on either utilitarian or moral grounds - they must provide evidence to back up their case. And explain how this fosters civilized values among our allies - or encourages our enemies to believe in them. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.