Controversy around the Manchester bombing inquests show our intelligence services must be more accountable

The Conservative Party conference was not the only place in Manchester where urgent behind-the-scenes discussions were going on this week. Something similar was happening, if rather more quietly and confidentially, in and around the coroner’s court.

More than two years after the bombing at the Manchester Arena, which killed 23 people and injured more than 100, a controversy has erupted about the form that the inquests – which are required by law – should take, what evidence should be heard, and how.

It is a controversy that is all too predictable. It centres yet again on the balance that has to be drawn in any democratic, law-governed, country between accountability and transparency, on the one hand, and the requirements of national security, on the other.

And yet again, the UK public in general and the survivors of a terrorist atrocity and their families and friends, in particular, look set to be scandalously shortchanged, with the security and intelligence services likely to be given a free pass. The line, in other words, is being drawn in the wrong place.

The background to the Manchester bombing is complicated – with gaps in the timeline suggesting that the authorities know more than they are prepared to say. A year afterwards, it emerged that the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, had not only been on the radar of UK intelligence services but was among 100 or so UK citizens who had been evacuated from Tripoli by the Royal Navy three years earlier, as the civil war in Libya raged.

It had earlier been revealed that Abedi’s father was a fugitive from the Gaddafi regime, who had then returned to Libya to fight with the armed opposition.

Almost a year ago, a report by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee on the five separate terrorist attacks that took place in 2017 found that MI5 and counter-terrorism police had missed several “potential opportunities” to prevent the Manchester Arena bombing.

In particular, it emerged that Abedi was being monitored by the security services when he left the UK, but that his case was closed shortly before he was repatriated, and he was then able to travel back to Libya without restriction.

Not unreasonably, those affected by the Manchester bombing want to find out more about what went wrong and argue that these questions should form part of the inquest. The authorities, though, have other ideas. Last month, Sir John Saunders, the coroner of the Manchester Arena inquest, ruled that there was some intelligence that would cause a risk to national security if it became public.

He upheld what is called a “public interest immunity” application, underwritten by the Home Secretary, which claim that some of the testimony that security and other officers would give is so sensitive that it should not be heard in open court.

Making this testimony public, Sir John said in his ruling, would “assist terrorists in carrying out the sort of atrocities committed in Manchester” and make it less likely that the security service and counter-terrorism police would be able to prevent them. He said that a balancing exercise was required, and “the balancing exercise strongly favours the material in question not being disclosed”.

He now faces a choice. Either the inquests proceed with no evidence from the security services or anti-terrorism police (as all evidence at an inquest must be public), or the inquests are ditched and reconvened as a public inquiry, where – perversely – evidence can be heard in closed session, or by the presiding judge alone. It would appear that Sir John favours a public inquiry, as he noted that “an adequate investigation ... could not be conducted within the framework of the inquests”.

The result will inevitably mean less transparency than the survivors and families want and deserve – they (and the media) are likely to be excluded from the court if and when the supposedly sensitive intelligence and counter-terrorism evidence is given – and still more delay.

The latest planned date for the inquests was next April – practically three years after the bombing. But the re-casting of the inquests as a public inquiry will take more planning, and there is now another consideration. Last month, the UK secured the extradition from Libya of Hashem Abedi, Salman’s younger brother, who is to be tried in connection with the bombing. Convention has it that any trial precedes an inquest/inquiry. Everyone concerned is in for a long wait.

Forgive me if I sound a little jaded, but we have been around these tracks many times before. Lady Justice Hallett, who presided at the inquests after the 7/7 London bombings, fought a doughty battle to have the security services and counter-terrorism police testify. And she partially won. A witness described as a “very senior MI5 officer” testified from behind a green curtain. That was back in 2011. We are no further forward now.

Time and again, MI5, MI6 and the counter-terrorism police have refused to allow their officers to testify in open court, even anonymously from behind a curtain, as at the 7/7 inquest, or in-camera. There have been times – with former British citizens or British residents, in particular, who were imprisoned at Guantanamo or subject to “rendition” to third countries where they were tortured – when the government has preferred to pay large sums in compensation, rather than have testimony from or about the security services aired in court. The result is a thick veil of secrecy.

Marina Litvinenko had to wait nine years for the inquiry into her husband’s radiation poisoning and when the inquiry eventually took place, a substantial amount of the evidence – protected by those very same “public interest immunity” certificates that now protect the security services in relation to the Manchester bombing – came from the security services and was heard not even in closed court, but by the judge alone. All reference to that evidence was excluded from the eventual judgment. What sort of judicial process is that?

John Cooper QC, the barrister representing the families of the Manchester victims, has said he is aware of “embarrassing” evidence which highlighted the “shortcomings” of the security services.

How does anyone know that failings and embarrassment are not as much – or indeed more – the reason for secrecy than any genuine risk to national security? The days of “trust us, we’re the government” are over; they have been over at least since the UK went to war in Iraq on the basis of erroneous intelligence. It is time for a whole new appraisal of the secrecy that shrouds MI5 and MI6 and the rest.

Of course, there are still secrets that must be kept; secrets that would pose a real threat to national security were they divulged. Not everything can be out in the open. But in a modern democracy, there is also a need for accountability and I would venture that the United States has it at least a fraction more right here than we do.

Anyone who wants proof of how ossified our structures are needs look no further than the admirable BBC4 documentary series The Troubles. A secret history. The latest instalment dealt specifically with the activities of the UK intelligence services in Northern Ireland.

Along with the real heroism and the operations justifiably conducted in the shadows were accounts of excesses and illegality that not only ended and blighted lives but remain under wraps – and excused – to this day. What is more, the defence for secrecy, right or wrong, seems every bit as pervasive now as it was then.

If trust in government has any chance of being restored, reforms that would allow more light to be cast on the activities and competence of the security services could be a good place to start.