Broadly, there are 3 components to a BoI; Legal, Airmanship and Technical. The last includes such things as Safety, with Legal also covering the obligation to implement regulations.
May I suggest the Civilian Police would only be valuable in the Legal part, especially after the nonsense of the Philip Review, which in an effort to “clear” Wratten, Day, Graydon etc clearly contradicted all previous statements on the subject of legal advice to the ROs. For example;
Lord Bach -
“The very high standard of proof to support a negligence finding that this regulation required, is fully understood; in the case of the Mull of Kintyre accident, the senior Reviewing Officers were specifically advised of this position”.
Geoff Hoon –
“The Reviewing Officers were also very aware of the high standard of proof required in reaching their decision”.
ACMs Graydon and Johns -
"We also bring to the attention of the committee the advice provided to the AOC (Wratten) at the time given by the RAF Directorate of Legal Services which answers the question of misdirection".
ACM Wratten –
“But a judgement has to be made, and my colleagues and I reached the judgement we did in the light of what we felt to be irrefutable evidence, not opinion, evidence”.
In his desperation to clear Wratten and Day, Lord Philip effectively accused all these people of lying. Of course, the supreme irony (which he blithely ignored) is he was correct in the case of Wratten, who did not have the irrefutable evidence he claimed. What further action is planned? I recall a jockey being stripped of a gong for a far lesser offence. Wratten, Day, Graydon, Johns, Alcock; all Knights of the Realm and all have brought disgrace upon their Service by supporting a gross miscarriage of justice; and lying in the process. I’ve omitted Bagnall as he’s never spoken about why he withheld from aircrew the FACT the aircraft was unsafe. And I omitted Spiers as the Air Staffs turned against him, in an effort to protect Bagnall, when lying to families over the existence of an RTS; and he had the honesty to confirm Bagnall, Graydon and Alcock had withheld the 1992 CHART report from him. (Perhaps the worst act of all, as it affected ALL aircrew of ALL 3 Services).
But it was Philip who ignored the evidence and in the process lent his name to this self serving, illegal support of maladministration and fraud. His judgement, as with Haddon-Cave’s, was not evidence-based. (Quite how Legal people thought they’d get away with that is beyond me). Both ignored the irrefutable evidence in an effort to appease all sides. This does the entire Safety Management process no favours, as it encourages the likes of Graydon and Alcock, and their sycophantic successors, to believe they can still get away with corporate manslaughter with impunity. MoD is still staffed by the same old names who are on record as ruling airworthiness is optional if waiving it can save time or money.
I am not yet persuaded the BoI system is inherently flawed, although posters here have provided some indications that it may be.
The entire Safety Management process, of which the BoI is a small but important part, is fatally flawed. And underpinning this flaw is the ethos of those who self-administer. The basic mistake the MoK BoI made, along with most others, is they completely ignored the Legal and Technical components. The Legal advice to the ROs was the verdict was unsustainable. The Technical advice (and evidence) was the aircraft was not airworthy. The Legal evidence was not mentioned by Philip, but he agreed with it (the basis of his decision). He did mention the airworthiness evidence, stating the advice from Boscombe and CA that the aircraft was not airworthy was "mandated" (upon Bagnall). Like airworthiness, the BoI “system” may be robust, but it is not implemented properly.
Last edited by tucumseh; 14th Jul 2012 at 11:54.