Agreed Jindy.
Perhaps it's time to revisit Brian Dixon's second post on this thread,and I hope he does not mind me repeating it.
The following is a letter published in the Sunday Herald on 10 Feb 02.
Why the MoD must pardon the Chinook pilots. .By Malcolm Rifkind, Secretary Of State For Defence 1992-1995
. .The defence secretary and the Prime Minister are in danger of making themselves look very foolish. . .Last week a high-powered House of Lords select committee published its report into the 1994 Chinook air disaster that caused the deaths of the cream of British military intelligence. . .The select committee was chaired by the formidable Lord Jauncey, a former Lord of Appeal and a judge whom I know from my own experience to be a person of the highest ability and integrity. He was assisted by four colleagues, two of whom are distinguished QCs. They had no axe to grind and they approached their task with great professionalism.
They concluded, unanim-ously, that it would be wrong for the Ministry of Defence to maintain the finding of gross negligence against the deceased pilots of the Chinook made eight years ago by two senior RAF air-marshals. . .The immediate reaction of the government was made by armed forces minister Adam Ingram within hours of the publication of the report. He could hardly have had time to read it, but he appeared to dismiss it as containing nothing new. The implication was that the government would not budge.
That in itself would not run counter to any of the previous behaviour of the Ministry of Defence. There has already been a fatal accident inquiry, under a Scottish sheriff, which concluded that the finding of gross negligence was unsafe and should not be maintained. The government ignored that.
The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, its most important select committee, has accused the Ministry of Defence of arrogance and called for the verdict to be put aside. They have been ignored for their pains. There have been various studies of the accident by aeronautics and com puter experts, all of whom have concluded that technical problems may have caused the accident. Their views have been dismissed.
To make matters worse, the RAF has changed its procedures so that never again will air-marshals be asked to allocate blame for air accidents. They will try to identify the technical causes of air accidents but leave questions of blame to the civilian courts. The Chinook case, therefore, re mains a hangover from a discredited procedure, but the Ministry of Defence clings to the air-marshals' decision with all the tenacity of a rottweiler.
I confess I have a personal interest in this case. I was the secretary of state for defence at the time the air- marshals reached their decision. I endorsed it and reported its conclusion to parliament. . .I recall being sad that the pilots were being blamed, but at that time I had no reason to question the conclusion of the RAF that gross negligence was the cause of the accident. These are highly complex and technical matters. A defence secretary has no more specialist knowledge of why an aircraft might have crashed than a health secretary would have on why a heart transplant had gone wrong. One must, to a considerable extent, trust the judgement of one's senior advisers.
Why, then, have I changed my mind and called for the verdict to be set aside? . .The main reason is the substantial volume of evidence that has since emerged concerning the technical faults that the Chinook was experiencing at the time -- the problems with the computer software and other difficulties that had, on occasion, led to the Chinook helicopters being grounded.
The Ministry of Defence has admitted these defects, but has always argued that as these technical problems could not -- in their view -- have contributed to the Mull of Kintyre accident, they did not invalidate the verdict. For the same reason, it had not been felt necessary to draw them to the attention of the relevant ministers. That view has been consistently challenged by aeronautics experts over the past eight years.
The RAF's own rules made it clear that a verdict of gross negligence could be reached only if there were absolutely no doubt. Much doubt has emerged, as Lord Jauncey and his eminent colleagues have concluded. . .The current position of the Ministry of Defence is untenable on two counts. First, they rest on the air-marshals' conclusion that, as no other cause of the accident has been identified, it can only be explained by the gross negligence of the pilots. Such reverse reasoning would be dismissed in any civilian court, where one would be required to provide hard evidence that points to negligence. You cannot merely assume negligence in the absence of any other explanation.
The second failure of ministers is more fundamental. Again and again they say they will reconsider the verdict only if new evidence appears which was not considered by the air- marshals. They know perfectly well that after eight years it is highly unlikely that any new evidence will ever appear. We will probably never have any hard evidence as to what caused the accident on that fateful day. . .But that is irrelevant. The point at issue is not whether there is new evidence, but whether the known facts justified the air-marshals in finding that the pilots had been grossly negligent.
When a Scottish sheriff, the Public Accounts Committee, numerous aeronautics experts and now a House of Lords select committee chaired by a senior judge all advise that a verdict of gross negligence is unsustainable on the known facts, it is the height of stubbornness and obduracy for ministers to refuse to consider using their discretion. . .In one sense the families of the pilots have already won their campaign. The reputation of the two pilots has already been restored, given the huge weight of professional expertise that has rejected the verdict. If the two air-marshals and the government refuse to retract that rejected verdict, that reflects on them and on their judgement.
I have the greatest respect for the RAF and for the Ministry of Defence. Those who work there, including the two air-marshals (who are now retired), are people of great integrity and professionalism. I do not believe there is any cover-up, or any sinister explanation for their refusal to set aside the negligence verdict. . .But there is a culture of resentment at others seeking to second-guess RAF expertise. To acknowledge a mistake would hurt, and might reopen many policy questions. I am sure there are many who wish this whole issue would just go away.
Yet it will not. There are basic issues of natural justice at stake. It is, in any event, no longer for the RAF or for the officials in the Ministry of Defence to decide. This sort of issue is exactly why we have ministers; why ministers are accountable to parliament and to the public for the actions of those under them.
Mr Hoon and the Prime Minister cannot hide any longer behind the air-marshals and the Ministry of Defence. When issues of natural justice are at stake ministers must exercise their own judgment. If Mr Hoon is too blinkered or too overwhelmed by his officials to act, the Prime Minister must do so for him.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
[ 11 February 2002)
