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Nimrod Review

My Lords, I start by joining the Government in sending our condolences to the families and friends of the two soldiers of the 3rd Battalion The Rifles who were killed in Afghanistan. I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. The subtitle of the Nimrod review is "A Failure of Leadership, Culture and Priorities". This surely sums up its 583 pages. While we accept, as the Statement says, that the work of defence is inherently dangerous, this report requires questions to be asked and lessons applied. Fourteen lives were lost on the Nimrod XV230. We owe it to their families to establish as far as possible exactly what happened and to try to prevent it from ever happening again. We owe it to them to ensure that the Armed Forces have confidence in a safety regime that applies to the increasingly complex equipment that they are using. Above all, the report shows that, where safety is concerned, cutting costs inevitably leads to cutting corners. Ultimately something will fail, be it from human error or from mechanical or systems failures. When this happens, the result, as painfully detailed in the report, will be catastrophic. We welcome the creation of the independent MAA. The MAA will need to have competence to deal with industry. More and more, through-life capability management is being outsourced to industry and we welcome the Government’s commitment to institute improved checks and audits by the MAA on industry compliance. We particularly welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, has been asked to establish a much clearer understanding of the different roles and interests of industry and of the MoD and to be sure that industry meets the needs of the Government and the Armed Forces. It is vital that the proper technical advice is passed up the chain and that the Armed Forces should trust that advice. Mr Haddon-Cave recommended a new approach to aviation safety cases. The Nimrod safety case was a lamentable job from start to finish. We welcome the Government’s acceptance that instructions need to be made much simpler and more relevant. The report was very critical of two companies, BAE Systems and QinetiQ. The delay in their responses is not acceptable, as they both had plenty of warning. Did those two companies give the Government any reasons for that delay? The report criticised two senior retired officers, General Sir Sam Cowan and Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger, for their roles as CDL during the key periods. Yet in all that they did, they were carrying out the strategy, policies and actions of the MoD, continuously reiterated and discussed with Ministers. If there was, as has been described in the report, ""a sustained period of deep organisational trauma"," within the MoD, the Secretary of State must answer for that. In our parliamentary culture, it is Ministers who are accountable, both to Parliament and to the public, and it is wholly wrong that those retired officers should be pilloried in the press as they have been. What message does that send to serving members of the Armed Forces? I hope that the noble Lord will acknowledge the injustice done to them. It will take more than a few tweaks to the bureaucratic structure of the MoD and DE&S to fix the shortcomings identified in this report. We need to see a thorough overhaul of the regime in the MoD, in DE&S and among civilian constructors to ensure that disasters like this do not happen again.