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Mr. Wilkinson: Is that not the case? To do anything other than what the hon. Gentleman has described is to imperil the aircraft and to fly it in a grossly negligent manner.

Mr. O'Neill: The hon. Gentleman is making my point for me. For men of the distinction of the pilots who have been accused of gross negligence, nothing would be further from their training, their habits or their behaviour. We are dealing with an element of gross negligence—everyone is agreed that it is extremely difficult to prove—involving pilots of the highest calibre, men who expressed misgivings about the craft that they were flying prior to the incident, men who would not take risks, having been so open and frank with their superiors and with others. They said that they had worries about the aircraft that they were required to fly. It might be said that that story could be fabricated, but it comes over in the evidence time and time again.

Mr. Wilkinson: The hon. Gentleman is most generous. Will he take it from me that history is littered with the wreckage of the careers and lives of the most experienced and wonderful pilots, who for various reasons seem to have broken all the rules and killed themselves, and perhaps others? That is a sad fact of aviation history.

Mr. O'Neill: I have heard that argument advanced before. I accept the point. I return to the responsibility with which the men concerned were charged. They had to take the cargo or the assets, whichever word we want to use. They had to take some of the most important people who were engaged in a war. Two of them were in the one aircraft at the one time, behaving negligently. I find that hard to understand.

The air marshals have always fairly maintained that the pilots never saw Mull and that no technical failure or malfunction occurred that deprived the pilots of control

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up to the point of impact. Lastly, the Boeing simulator provided a reasonably accurate demonstration of the aircraft's movements for a period prior to impact. These were the assertions made by Ministers and by the air marshals. In paragraph 148 of the Jauncey report, we find the greatest single charge against that view. The Select Committee states:

"We consider that Sir John's conclusions on this matter"—

that is, gross negligence—

"must be weakened by his reliance on matters which he treated as facts but which have been demonstrated to our satisfaction to be not facts but merely hypotheses or assumptions."

That is the most telling part of all the reports.

If we are to read the interrogation or cross-examination that results in that conclusion, we see that it is not coming from someone who wishes to dissemble, or someone who wishes to put out a picture that is not true. It seems that we have almost lost sight of the wood for the trees. There is a welter of data. It must be said—this is one of the shortcomings of the tribunal system—that those with the greatest expertise are not necessarily the best people to weigh evidence. That is what the sheriff was able to do. It was what Lord Jauncey and his colleagues, doubtless under his direction, were able to do. That is where we are moving into new territories.

In the past, I have questioned people's integrity. I worried about the fact that there was a war. I have been concerned about technical data. I do not think that we need concern ourselves with those issues now. We have the facts. The way in which the inquiry has conducted its affairs requires our response. I hope that tonight we do not have votes and a confrontation. I hope that we can give the Government more time to pause and reflect.

It could be said that for the Department to change its mind on this issue is akin to a large tanker turning round. I make no reference to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie). Much reassessment is required. It is correct that before such a process is undergone, every piece of evidence both for and against is submitted to the greatest scrutiny. That is why I do not disparage the attempt to re-engage with Boeing on this issue.

I would like to think that the young men concerned—the members of the crew who were with them and their passengers—and their families will know that justice has been done. At present, too many people believe that justice has yet to be done.

8.46 pm

Mr. James Arbuthnot (North-East Hampshire): It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill). Today, our thoughts are with the crews of the Chinook helicopters that are about to fly out from Odiham to Afghanistan. I live three miles from Odiham, and I have fought to keep the Chinook base there because the local community is so proud of what the Chinook fleet does for the country.

We know that the crews will acquit themselves well in Afghanistan. We know that they will acquit their country with great honour, because they always do. A year or so ago, they acquitted themselves utterly brilliantly in Sierra Leone, and we know that they will do no less in Afghanistan.

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Our thoughts are also with the families of the crews. Being left behind is one of the hardest tasks of all. The families will be hoping, as will we all, that their loved ones will come back safely. Yesterday, the Secretary of State told us that there may be casualties in Afghanistan. The families will know that if, God forbid, something dreadful happens during the campaign, they will not have to go through the agonies that the families of Jonathan Tapper and Rick Cook have been through. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) has said, the Royal Air Force has rightly changed the rules. The attribution of blame for negligence is now left to the civil courts. However, it is not enough to change the rules when we see that the rules are not working. If the Royal Air Force imposes rules on itself it, like everybody else, it is obliged to follow them. The key rule in all of this is the rule,

"Only in cases in which there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever should deceased air crew be found negligent."

That is what the RAF manual says; that is the rule that the RAF imposed on itself for good reason; that is the rule that it is obliged to obey and that is the rule that it broke.

In the debate on defence policy on 14 February, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ruislip- Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) made the best defence I have yet heard of the decision by the Ministry of Defence to stick to the verdict of the board of inquiry. He made a number of important points. First, he said that an aircraft that had not had clearance from the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down should never again

"be allowed to perform such an important mission".

I agree. Only the day before the crash, Boscombe Down had not only failed to clear the aircraft, it had refused even to allow the continuance of test-flying of the Chinook mark 2. Perhaps the most poignant thing is that days before the crash Rick Cook had asked his father to look after his family if things went wrong; it seemed that he knew that the aircraft was not yet ready.

That brings me to my first question to the Minister. In his winding-up speech on 14 February, the Minister of State for Defence asked

"all Members to take their consideration beyond the technical aspects of the report and the terrible tragedy that occurred."

He continued:

"We also have to examine the airmanship decisions taken by the pilots on the day."—[Official Report, 14 February 2002; Vol. 380, c. 382, 410.]

Of course, he was right. However, those who defend the decision of the board of inquiry now tend to say, "Well, something may have gone wrong with the aeroplane, but it should not have been there at that time, at that speed and in those conditions." Can the Under-Secretary of State for Defence say whether the MOD accepts that indeed there may have been a fault in FADEC? After all, the MOD was taking Textron Lycoming to arbitration, so something must have been wrong. Will the Minister say, preferably yes or no, whether the MOD accepts that there could at least be some doubt about the air-worthiness of the helicopter's control system? If the answer is no, what on earth was the arbitration about? More to the point, why on earth did the arbitration succeed?

Mr. Dalyell: Is the right hon. Gentleman not shocked that apparently the then Secretary of State, Malcolm

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Rifkind, a personal friend of mine, was not told that arbitration was going on? Should not someone in the MOD have said, "Look, Secretary of State, we think you ought to know that all this arbitration is going on and may be relevant."?

Mr. Arbuthnot: Yes, I am shocked that Malcolm Rifkind was not told. Someone in the MOD should have said, "Look, Secretary of State, something is going on." However, the present Secretary of State should recognise that that is a new fact and was not available to the board of inquiry when it reported. For Ministers to come to the House, or speak on television or radio programmes, and say that the various inquiries have produced nothing new is an utter travesty of the truth.

Ms Debra Shipley (Stourbridge): Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, given the quality of this evening's contributions, that it would reflect well on the MOD and the armed forces to acknowledge that things were not as they should have been? There is a need for change—there has indeed been a culture of change—and we must progress more constructively.

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