Written question asked by Gwyneth Dunwoody (Labour) on Thursday, 27 January 2000, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 3 February 2000. It was answered by Chris Mullin (Labour) on Thursday, 3 February 2000 on behalf of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

Dept of the Environment Transport and the Regions

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, how many instances of pressure on commercial pilots to lower safety standards have been registered in the confidential reporting system in the last 12 months. - Inc figures.

Answer: Mrs. Dunwoody: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions how many instances of pressure on commercial pilots to lower safety standards have been registered in the confidential reporting system in the last 12 months. [108031] Mr. Mullin: The UK Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme (CHIRP) is run by the CHIRP Charitable Trust. The January 2000 edition of CHIRP's publication "Feedback" contains a "Key Word analysis" of reports received in 1999, which indicates that the key words `commercial pressure' appeared in 7 per cent. of the 141 reports received that year in the flight deck category. The analysis notes that in view of the voluntary nature of the reporting process, the results have no statistical significance.

Secondary information