No, Mr Bond, I expect you to settle out of court

Right now, there are about 60 assorted cases of people trying to sue Britain’s intelligence services. Is that because our spies are unusually wicked, cavalier or brutal? Or because they may be caught in a legal trap with the laser beam of the human rights lobby moving ever-closer to their vitals? I argue the latter in my Telegraph column today, effectively a defence of what is wrongly described as ‘secret courts’.

For some years now, a game of British spy-catching has been going on. The rules are simple. Say a bomb goes off in Pakistan this Christmas and the police round up suspects with their, ahem, usual care and attention. They are all released, without charge. But it is now standard operating procedure to sue the Brits – especially if one had spent some time in London. All he needs do is claim he was questioned by a Brit (or on behalf of one) and then sue, claiming tangential MI5 or MI6 involvement.