Fitness for Purpose and Duty of Care
This thread has been quiet for a few days, and I guess many people like myself have been following the Hercules saga and the outstanding efforts by Nigel and chappie to both improve safety for the future and see justice done. Indeed it was in comparing what is happening on the Hercules and our continuing fight on the Chinook that it struck me that there may be another way to make MOD and indeed the RAF (in this case) management chain face up to its responsibilities.
Nobody can pretend that military operations will ever be safe, or indeed that there will not be accidents, but with the Crown no longer able to take advantage of Crown exemption it seems to me that the words “fitness for purpose” and “duty of care” are just as applicable to military operations and training (in peace and war) as they are to any other part of society.
If we take “fitness for purpose” it seems to me this must include giving the serviceman the most effective equipment to do the job – whether this is an assault rifle that works, a radio that works, an airworthy Chinook, or a Hercules with proper defensive aids and fuel tank inerting. How do you judge “effective” – well the obvious way is to compare what we have with the equipment standards of our allies and indeed enemies – sadly we too often fail on both counts.
If we send a serviceman or woman to fight with equipment that has obvious deficiencies and we then use tactics or make them “fight” in a way which makes those deficiencies more dangerous eg by authorising or insisting on low-level daylight operations where the threat regime highlights the deficiencies, then it seems to me that the commanders who took this decision may have now failed in their “duty of care”. The level at which this failure may have occurred could be quite low eg the officer of SNCO who allows military policemen to go on patrol with less than the required levels of ammunition or a radio that works. It could also be quite high – for example I am sure that Reid was correct when he said that it was a RAF decision not to fit tank inerting systems to the Hercules (they obviously saw JPA as more important!). The final link in the duty of care consideration must be that at command level you do not accept a task for which you do not have the right equipment – that might make the politicians more supportive! Given that the responsibilities would also feed back to the procurement of equipment the DPA might find a need to improve in a few areas as well.
Nonsense – totally incompatible with military operations – possibly – it would certainly make life much more difficult. We will always have casualties in military operations and training, but the fact remains that as far as I am aware the law applies equally to the Armed Services as to other walks of life, and one could argue that because military operations are so inherently dangerous they should only be undertaken when the command chain has made certain that they have met the most exacting “fitness for purpose” and “duty of care” considerations – and that would not, for example, have included selecting a Chinook Mk2 with ZD 576’s airworthiness history for a passenger flight against the captain’s recommendation and request.
Like war crimes this general issue comes down to being not just a command issue but also to an individual’s responsibility as, for example, a few MT officers found out in somewhat more benign circumstances, when some MOD MT operations did not meet the laws of the UK. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first family goes to the police to complain that MOD, or an individual, has failed in its/his “duty of care” responsibility and asks for a criminal investigation – it could never happen? We shall see – the words “Corporate Manslaughter” have appeared several times on the Hercules thread.
I look forward to hearing other people’s views.
JB