Thank you for the fraternal greetings, keithl, which I return in kind.
Your Commission report is obviously the result of much careful thought and study and I commend its members' thoroughness.
The thought that occurs is that:
3. The situation is different in civil aviation. The AAIB has precedence over police and a Memorandum of Understanding resolves difficulties over such matters as preservation of evidence, destructive testing and so on.
..the obvious question is why? For if the MAAIB had the same agreement and understanding then; bingo, your campaign against police primacy is answered!
The most glaring difference is the very thing that I bang on about, independence! The AAIB has it, the MAAIB does not. Give it that independence and what you seek will surely follow.
A number of posters have pointed out that the big change has been the loss of Crown Immunity, and all that follows from that, so the proposed set of procedures as outlined by you is surely doomed to failure if the one great anomaly remains, ie that the Investigator, Authority and Operator are one and the same.
You may say that is surmountable, but I would have to disagree, with respect. Independence is the crux of the matter. With it all else follows, without it nothing does.
The review of SBIs by judges does not strike me as a sound way of doing things. Getting the initial investigation right in the first place is surely better, ie with an independent MAAIB utilising AAIB inspectors, not as advisers but as members of the Board. That way the authority is vested into the investigation from the start.
I hope all that isn't seen as too dismissive but rather as an attempt at finding a solution that would work, or are we no longer friends...?
