MoD (including Ministers) have always denied that the safety management system was not implemented properly on Chinook.
As any engineer, and everything ever written on the subject, will tell you, configuration management is a crucial component of airworthiness and safety management.
From Public Accounts Committee report, July 1999........
33. Looking at the Sea King helicopters, paragraph 3.6, those were Sea King Mark 2 which were introduced quite quickly in 1982, and it seems your management information systems have not been able to establish their design status or keep up with the modifications to Chinook helicopters. Is that right? That is what that paragraph seems to say. I am not an expert on defence equipment so I hope I have understood it correctly.
(Sir Robert Walmsley) I think you have understood it absolutely correctly. That is true.
So, even after everything that had happened 5 years previously.......................