Duty Holder's Accountability
The following is an extract from the evidence given by Air Marshal Richard Garwood to the Defence Committee, in respect to Duty of Care, on 29th Nov 2016.
"I think it goes back to, as Sir Charles Haddon-Cave put forward in his report, that this must be about personal accountability and not corporate or wider accountability. That is why we now have the three-layered or four-layered Duty Holder construct with the fourth being the Secretary of State for Defence. If we had a fatality in the military tomorrow, I could give you the four names for any part of military defence who have accepted personal accountability for that. Perhaps I could refer to one of our Duty Holder letters from the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Andrew Pulford to Air Vice Marshal Turner, who is an Operating Duty Holder. Line 4 of the letter says: “You are personally legally responsible and accountable through the Secretary of State for air safety, the air systems and functional safety in your area of responsibility.” We are now crystal clear in the military about where that accountability lies and it is not at lower levels, but at pretty senior levels: Lieutenant Colonel up to Chief of the Air Staff in this instance, and above to the Secretary of State."
RA 1210 makes it clear that in the event of a fatality the Duty Holder is expected to defend his Safety statement in a court of law. So where were these guys in the Red Arrow case? In fact where were these guys in Tornado collision case, the Lynx case, the Puma case? In the shadows protecting their pensions. The MAA regulations are just "paper talk" that have got nothing to do with airworthiness and saving lives. Since the introduction of Haddon-Cave's duty holder concept not one senior officer has been called on to defend his safety statement (Tolerable and ALARP) in a court of law.
In recent email the MAA advised me that, "It should be noted that the validity of an ALARP argument can only be decided definitively by the courts, in the event of an accident". Do coroners and judges know that?
DV