Beckett attacks rendition records

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Poor record-keeping may be to blame for the late disclosure that US "rendition" flights carrying terror suspects landed on UK soil, Margaret Beckett has said.

The former foreign secretary said she had not been informed of British airspace being used for this purpose during her time in office.

She told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that UK record-keeping had been "not all that marvellous, frankly".

Last week it was revealed that two rendition flights had landed in 2002.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in both cases US planes had refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.

Water boarding

He said he was "very sorry" to have to say that previous denials made in "good faith" were now having to be corrected.

It was very difficult for the government to go back and look at what had happened on previous occasions Margaret Beckett

The renditions - the transport of terror suspects around the world for interrogation - had only come to light after a US records search, he said.

Mr Miliband said the UK had been told neither of the people transported on flights had been involved in "secret detention centres", nor had they been subject to water boarding - criticised as a form of torture by simulated drowning - "or other similar forms of interrogation".

'Trace'

Mrs Beckett, now chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said that when she was foreign secretary she had been told by the Americans that there was no evidence of British airspace being used for the flights.

She added: "One thing did come out from the report by the committee I now chair is that record keeping was not all that marvellous, frankly.

"It was very difficult for the government to go back and look at what had happened on previous occasions. There was not a clear, simple trace of record keeping.

"That may, I don't know, have been the case in the United States also."

Mrs Beckett said of her time as foreign secretary, from 2006 to 2007: "We did ask the Americans and the Americans told us there was no evidence of British airspace ever having been used.

"The Americans are now saying they have gone back and looked again and actually talked to some of the flight crews and discovered two cases."

Opposition parties have warned that the disclosure over rendition could undermine public trust in the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States.