Labour has been accused of rubber-stamping torture policy it criticised while in opposition for enabling UK complicity in serious human rights abuses overseas.
The policies regulating British support for foreign security and intelligence services were blamed for facilitating injustices in cases such as those of Jagtar Singh Johal and Ali Kololo, and it was hoped Labour would strengthen them in government.
But NGOs and senior MPs say “light-touch” government reviews of the overseas security and justice assistance (OSJA) guidance and “the principles” that govern intelligence sharing are likely to leave in place “very serious flaws”.
Their biggest concern is that Labour will not remove ministers’ ability to approve UK cooperation in situations where there is a real risk of torture or the death penalty.
Johal, a British human rights activist, was allegedly tortured in India, where he remains in jail, after a tipoff from UK intelligence services. Kololo was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death over an attack on British tourists after the Met police provided assistance to Kenyan authorities.
The Conservative MP and former cabinet minister David Davis said: “These policies are not a partisan issue; they are vital safeguards designed to prevent UK actions contributing to people being tortured or sentenced to death.
“Ministers should never be able to sign off on intelligence being shared or UK security assistance being granted where there is a risk of torture.
“That was true under the previous Conservative government and it’s true now under Labour. We should never forget that it was bogus intelligence acquired under torture that led to the justification of the Iraq war.
“It would be a grave error to leave these failed policies as they are, and the government must avoid anything that looks like a Whitehall stitch-up, not least as this would have profoundly negative consequences for the UK’s global reputation.”
Reprieve, Amnesty International UK, Freedom from Torture, the Omega Research Foundation, the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and Unredacted UK have written a joint letter to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, expressing concern that the policy reviews “may not sufficiently address the very serious flaws with the existing policy”.
The Liberal Democrat MP and former cabinet minister Alistair Carmichael said: “I would never have expected a Labour government to rubber-stamp Boris Johnson’s torture policy while paying lip service to human rights concerns, but that appears to be what is happening here.
“There is disturbing evidence that existing policies on intelligence-sharing and overseas security assistance leave the UK at risk of being mixed up in torture in some way. These policies need a proper overhaul, with input from victims of the previous failed approach, not the consultation-in-name-only that is going on at the moment.”
The government is being urged to consult Johal’s family and others adversely affected by the policies as well as publish terms of reference for the reviews.
Sir Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative MP and former deputy foreign secretary, said: “Any review worth its salt should be learning the lessons of Ali Kololo, and indeed seeking Mr Kololo’s input after everything he has been put through. The OSJA policy’s abject failure to prevent this case and others suggests it is fundamentally broken. No responsible minister would want to go beyond the law and get mixed up in torture or the death penalty, and the policy should make clear this is never permissible.”
Reprieve’s submission to the OSJA review states that under the former government the policy failed to block UK assistance to human rights abusers in Libya, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Saudi Arabia.
Dan Dolan, Reprieve’s deputy executive director, said: “These two core human rights policies of the British government have in the last decade left a trail of people who have suffered torture and the death penalty, with sadly the UK’s assistance.
“If this government fails to follow through on its recognition in opposition that these policies are fatally flawed, then it will let down the survivors of human rights abuses where the UK has played a role.”
A Foreign Office spokesperson said it was “engaging with external stakeholders” and “recognising the important perspectives of civil society”. They added: “The guidance will set out how we ensure the UK’s overseas security and justice assistance work will meet our human rights obligations and values.”
