Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the The Mull of Kintyre Review, HC 1348, published July 2011, what assessment he has made of the implications of that review on similar cases that occurred between 1983 and 2011.

The Mull of Kintyre review was instrumental in the replacement of Boards of Inquiry with Service Inquiries. As the hon. Member will be aware, a Service Inquiry is an inquiry held under statute and is not permitted to apportion blame or find negligence, but rather seeks to identify where there are lessons to help prevent recurrence.

It is not possible to overturn aspects of Boards of Inquiry held in the past without full reinvestigation of the original incident, and it would not be benificial to re-open any such inquiries, where it is deemed there are no lessons to be identified for the Service, such as where aircraft are no longer in service for example.