NewsBiscuit

Three men charged with terrorism offences have won a legal battle in the House of Lords to disallow the use of made-up evidence against them.

Government and Police lawyers had argued strongly that the use of fabricated evidence was essential in cases where proof of involvement in a crime was ‘hard or impossible to obtain by truthful means’. However the Law Lords ruled unanimously that all evidence, like High Court judges, should henceforth have at least some tenuous link with reality.

Police unions have warned that the Law Lords’ ruling will almost certainly lead to job cuts, with large departments of authors of forged confessions and witness statements inevitably forced back into the less lucrative world of estimating numbers at demonstrations and writing romantic novels.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has expressed disappointment at the decision ‘Ah well, at least we’ll always have torture,’ he added in a heartfelt statement.