Human rights: A luxury we can't afford

His claims were made in the foreword to the latest Foreign Office human rights report, published on Wednesday night.

Mr Miliband said the nation must not be scared of debating the issue of human rights but is himself currently embroiled in several legal actions in which he has attempted to have evidence suppressed.

The Foreign Office claimed Britain "did not have the luxury" of refusing to co-operate with torturers, as it is alleged to have done in the case of several British nationals including Binyam Mohamed and Shaker Aamer.

In his foreword to the report Mr Miliband stated: "We must not be afraid to engage in debates about human rights. But we must also remain committed to championing those rights around the world and to assert their applicability to every man, woman and child."

But in the report the Foreign Office states that it "must work with intelligence and security agencies overseas. Some of them share our standards and laws while others do not. But we cannot afford the luxury of only dealing with those that do."

Amnesty International UK terror and security campaign manager Sara MacNeice dismissed the claim.

"Combating torture is not a 'luxury' - it is a legal and moral requirement," she said.

"The UK government should be doing all it can to stop other countries using torture. Yet we're increasingly seeing the UK authorities turning a blind eye to this horrific crime or even being directly complicit in it.

"What's more, the government has persistently attempted to keep secret the UK's involvement in abusive practices. It's high time for a full, independent inquiry that examines the full extent of the UK's involvement in human rights violations in the 'war on terror'."

In addition the government failed to publish its current guidelines on interrogation for secret service agents operating in the field yesterday, almost exactly a year after Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a public pledge to do so.

The guidelines have been drawn up to replace those which have been operational since 2004 but which the government refuses to publish. It had been anticipated that the 2009 guidelines would be published prior to a Commons debate yesterday but at the eleventh hour the government said it was not in a position to do so.

Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith said: "The government has collapsed the scrum again because they just don't want to take part in the process. It is time for the referee to award a penalty.

"Why does it take more than a year to change a torture policy that should be perfectly simple - 'we never do it, we are not complicit in it and when we learn that someone has been tortured we do as the law requires and report it?'

"Meanwhile, because of this official sloth, British agents continue to operate under the 2004 torture policy which is presumptively either inappropriate or illegal."