Mull of Kintyre Review

Debate between Jim Hood and Liam Fox

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I reiterate my great thanks to my right hon. Friend for the work that he has done. The conclusions that he has stated are correct. All I would say is that in producing this report we seem to have created a crack team, and I am sure that Governments with inquiries in future will take note of that.

[Mr Jim Hood (Lanark and Hamilton East) (Lab)]

May I equally thank the Secretary of State and compliment him on correcting this wrong?

I have to say that my recollection, having sat on the Select Committee along with my friend the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), is not as kind towards the air marshals as what has been said today. The truth is that they did not have any evidence on which to come up with the decision that they did, and they laid their decision on legal advice. The families of those two pilots were right to expect that two air marshals would know better and not rely on a decision by lawyers. The two pilots have been scapegoated for all these years, and respective Defence Ministers and the officials in the Ministry of Defence have run away from this for all these years. The House is indebted to the Secretary of State for having corrected this wrong, but we cannot correct the wrong without pointing out that the two air marshals were a serious part of the problem.

[Dr Fox]

In fairness, the board of inquiry said that the most likely cause of the crash was pilot error, but it did not attribute blame. The air marshals used their experience and intuition to make a judgment based on the board of inquiry’s findings. Lord Philip and his team found that they were not able to do that based on the level of evidence required to attribute negligence in the way that they did.