HR
Agreed, however “press” and “responsible” seldom sit well together.
Also, is it not an indictment of MoD’s senior staffs and politicians that we must even contemplate such action? Our rules are simple, for both Service and Civilian personnel. Any complaint or grievance is dealt with by means of escalation through one’s management. Until quite recently, the (civilian) rules permitted a line manager to judge his own case. That is no longer the case with one’s first LM, but still is for the rest. You have a choice. If you don’t agree, resign; or sit tight and fight from within. Better to keep your enemy close.
So, each time I was instructed to breach my legal obligations to the Secretary of State and PUS, and of course my Duty of Care, all I could do was complain to the very people who were instructing me to commit an offence. Escalation takes years. Despite the regs saying each stage must be dealt with expeditiously, the only time I got a formal rejection or ruling against me was just as that person was leaving post. It took years. Finally, you get to PUS. (He didn’t reply at all but I’m willing to bet it was kept from him).
What if we had gone to the press? (Legally, you can only risk that after exhausting internal means). They’d ask MoD for a statement. We’ve already seen what happened when, in 2005, Adam Ingram was briefed, presumably by his airworthiness “experts”, that the regs were being implemented correctly and I was the only one in MoD who thought otherwise. (Yes, got that in writing as well). What would an editor do? ****can it, no story. The Hercules and Nimrod crashes suddenly made it a national story, but in MoD we’d been waiting for it for 15 years. This is the worst aspect – none of it came as a surprise.
No, in practice it is very difficult to get such a message across. That is why the regs require independent scrutiny from top to bottom. That reg isn’t implemented either. It is only post-Haddon-Cave that the penny has dropped. I’m not holding my breath waiting for a retraction and admission that there is someone else in MoD who agrees with me. (Perhaps there isn’t and the MAA is just for show. Don’t know, never spoken to them). Nor will they amend my service record to reflect what has happened. And they wonder why I don’t let go?