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Nimrod Review

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement and for prior sight of it, as well as for details of the recommendations that the Government intend to implement and those that they intend not to accept. Charles Haddon-Cave's report was, for many of us, the most damning thing that we had ever seen in our time in Parliament. His criticism of the Nimrod safety case was excoriating. Let me remind the House that he said that it""was a lamentable job from start to finish. It was riddled with errors. It missed the key dangers. Its production is a story of incompetence, complacency, and cynicism."" It is a report that I think we will all remember, however long we serve in this House. The bottom line is that 14 men died in a tragedy that was wholly avoidable. There were previous warnings and previous incidents, but appropriate action was not taken, and two major companies with international reputations, as well as the MOD, are involved. I do not think that anybody in this House wants a witch hunt. No one is seeking scapegoats for the sake of having scapegoats, but as well as ensuring that, as the Secretary of State said, no repetition occurs, we also need to know who takes responsibility for what happened—responsibility as regards the families who have lost loved ones, and the armed forces. As we have often said in this House, we have two duties to our armed forces—to ensure that we do everything we can both to provide them with the maximum chance of success in their mission, and to minimise their risk in carrying out that mission. We have to ensure that they have confidence in the high-tech equipment on which they increasingly rely. I welcome the measures set out in the Secretary of State's statement and in the Government's wider detailed response, including the setting up of the military aviation authority. However, given the complexity of the issue, I am sure that the Secretary of State will understand that we will want to look at this in greater detail, and in particular at the recommendations that the Government do not want to implement. It is worth praising MOD staff for having acted expeditiously in going through the report and ensuring that these items can be implemented as soon as possible. I have some specific questions, but before I come to them let me say that overall, responsibility for technical issues needs to lie with technical experts. I have to say—as I did seven weeks ago—that I still have worries about the quality of advice being passed up the chain. Is the Secretary of State satisfied that sufficient and independent assessment of technical advice is being given to Ministers? There is no point in making Ministers responsible if they are not safeguarded in the quality of the advice that they receive. The MOD pays to be an intelligent customer, so how does the Secretary of State specifically assess the role of QinetiQ in making the MOD an intelligent customer in this case? Why the delay in the QinetiQ and BAE responses? They knew that the report was coming, they had ample time to make their case and it is simply not good enough. We in this House and the families deserve a full and proper explanation, and delays and excuses about who has retired simply will not wash. Let me turn to the specific issues. Will the Secretary of State first tell us how much the setting up and running costs of the MAA will be, and which budgets they will come from? Will he explain in a little more detail than he did in his statement why the new MAA will not have release-to-service responsibility? Is it, as I think he implied, because it is not just about the safety of the aircraft but about the fact that the environment in which they will have to operate will be taken into account, as will the specific circumstances at the time? If that is so, how do we avoid the risk of cutting corners and finding ourselves with the potential of another tragic event? In a culture—whether we like it or not—of increasing legal liability, it is a worry to all of us in this House as well as to our armed forces that we seem now to be compounding warfare with lawfare. I have three other specific questions that I would like to put to the Secretary of State. Does he accept, and does the MOD accept, that it was a mistake to abolish the post of chief engineer of the RAF? To amplify what he has said already, can he give a categorical assurance, given that the airworthiness regime is consistent across the air domain, that all air assets in all three service are "safe to fly"? Can he guarantee that the imperative of speed in introducing urgent operational requirements to platforms for theatre has in no way degraded the airworthiness case of the aircraft being deployed? I turn briefly to the question of compensation. No sum of money can compensate for the loss of a loved one. None the less, compensation is at least in part an act of atonement that recognises responsibility for failure. Does the Secretary of State agree that any level of compensation set has to reflect that concept adequately? Will he ensure that the process of compensation occurs expeditiously and accurately? At the same time, will he also ensure that the same applies to pension arrangements, because, as he will be aware, some of the families have concerns about the accuracy of the system? I shall end as I started, by speaking about the avoidable deaths of 14 of our service personnel. Their families will bear their loss for ever, and this is a very difficult time of year for them. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in wishing the families, to the best extent that circumstances will allow, a happy and peaceful Christmas.