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3.14 pm

Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall) (LD): I sympathise with the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) in that I, too, represent border country—in my case, the border is between Celtic Cornwall and England, and I agree that problems arise.

This afternoon, I want to raise issues that will concern all hon. Members, rather than raising parochial issues. For some years now, as a member of the Royal British Legion Gulf war group, I have raised concerns on behalf of service families in a series of debates in this House. A number of my immediate family have been regulars in the armed forces, but I must say that I have only recently become aware of the extraordinary disparity between, on the one hand, the commitment of those who serve us, and their families, and, on the other, the often complacent and cavalier attitude of the Ministry of Defence, which has been particularly apparent since the Gulf war of 1991. The continuing serious health problems suffered by so many veterans of that conflict are still a matter of concern, and all too often the Ministry's attitude seems to have carried over into the treatment of those who have served in Iraq in the past 12 months.

We saw another example of that just a few days ago, when a research report identifying a much higher than average number of birth defects and stillborn babies among those service families was published. The Ministry rushed out a denial of the connection even before the actual results had been reported to Parliament—methinks it does protest too much.

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My main concern, however, is for the families who lost loved ones in the most recent conflict. Just 12 months after the first casualties in the Iraq invasion, there are still far too many unanswered questions. In the Christmas recess debate, I set out the full detail of the extraordinary and deplorable way in which the tragic death of Sergeant Steven Roberts, from Wadebridge in my constituency, has been investigated.

Sergeant Steven Roberts was the first British fatality in Iraq, on 25 March 2003. At the time of the Christmas recess debate, nearly nine months after he was killed, his widow and family had received hardly any official and authenticated information about the circumstances. However, drawing together the threads, I was able to make these points in that debate: first, Sergeant Roberts had been issued with enhanced combat body armour—so-called ECBA—but it had been taken away from him; secondly, had he still been wearing ECBA, his life would have been saved; thirdly, according to the National Audit Office report on equipment supply failures, 200,000 items of ECBA "disappeared" between 1999 and 2003, resulting in shortages in theatre in Iraq; fourthly, in his confrontation with Iraqi dissidents, Sergeant Roberts' pistol seems to have misfired, but it was reissued and not checked after his death; finally, Sergeant Roberts's family had been given the clear impression immediately after his loss that the fatal shot was fired by a colleague seeking to defend him in a case of "friendly fire", which is an artificial and unhelpful phrase.

We all know only too well that terrible mistakes can occur in the confusion of war. Troops know that they risk injury and even death in any hostilities, but that is not the issue. What is in question is whether the Ministry fulfils even its most basic responsibilities to those who serve their country in the armed forces and their families—months of inadequate information, inadequately communicated, is a pathetic response to that self-sacrifice.

At the close of the Christmas recess debate, the Minister, who is present today, assured me that those concerns would be drawn to the attention of the Secretary of State for Defence, who would meet me, Mrs. Samantha Roberts and other members of Steven Roberts's family. That meeting took place on 19 January, and the Secretary of State retreated from his previous assurances about equipment supply. The House will recall that on 14 May 2003 he told the Defence Committee that there was no evidence of serious shortages:

"There may have been the odd person who did not get the right sized pair of boots. There may have been the odd soldier who one day did not get his lunchtime ration pack. There may have been the odd soldier who did not like his ready-to-eat meal . . . There was sufficient clothing and protective equipment in theatre to deal with a force of this size."

Only five weeks later, Major-General Robin Brims, the UK land component commander, told the same Committee:

"I was aware that we did not have the body armour—we did not think we had the body armour—where we wanted it, in all cases, so we did a major redistribution and it is very hard to do a major redistribution . . . while actually conducting an operation."

At our meeting in January with the Secretary of State, I asked him to explain that extraordinary discrepancy in the evidence given to the Committee, but answer came

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there none. This is not a trivial issue, as I am sure hon. Members recognise. In the case of Sergeant Roberts, it was literally a matter of life and death. It was at that point in our meeting that Samantha Roberts asked the Secretary of State who carried the responsibility for these failures—if it was not the Secretary of State, who was it? Again, answer came there none. I talked to Mrs. Roberts again this week. Apart from being asked to contribute to a review of contact practices by the MOD's personnel services unit in circumstances of bereavement, she has had no further information, or even an approach from the Ministry.

If that was an isolated example—a one-off—it might be considered very regrettable, but a tragic exception that proved an otherwise impeccable rule. Unfortunately, however, my contact with other bereaved families suggests that the pattern is all too often the same. There is initial support from the immediate team in the unit concerned—that is very good—followed by limited information, which is often misleading and always incomplete, from the Ministry of Defence, then months of total silence, or sketchy details from apparently unofficial sources which cause more confusion than certainty. When at last results of a sort emerge from the official investigation, they appear piecemeal and without any conclusive MOD verdict.

After a full 12 months, many of these families are still in the dark about what caused the loss of their loved ones and whether lessons from mistakes have been learned for the future. That would seem to be precisely the case with the families of the Sea King helicopter crews—based at RNAS Culdrose in my county of Cornwall—who died in a collision during a night flight on 22 March 2003, at the very outbreak of hostilities. For many months, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) and I have been trying to establish the facts of that tragedy on behalf of those families. Last June, the original preliminary conclusions from a board of inquiry told the relatives that the cause of the crash was "indeterminable". That report, which I have been shown by the families, concludes that

"there is insufficient evidence to determine positively the cause of the accident."

There was certainly no criticism of the crews or any suggestion of pilot error. Indeed, it was implied that the problem might well have been the absence of night vision facilities, or the detailed advice that was available from air traffic control. The recommendations included the following:

"consideration should be given to fitting all embarked aircraft with a night vision capability."

After months of ineffective contact, with families pressing unsuccessfully for more details of the investigation, the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, the right hon. Member for East Kilbride (Mr. Ingram), told me:

"Both aircraft had reported visual contact with each other, but apparently lost situational awareness and collided. The aircraft were responsible for their own safety at the time of the collision."—[Official Report, 29 January 2004; Vol. 417, c. 505W.]

To the parents of those brave young men, that sounded all too like an attempt to shift the blame onto the pilots.

The Minister has since amplified his explanation, but the families remain understandably frustrated by the lack of a full and final conclusion to the investigation.

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Only last week, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives received some answers to his questions—12 months after the event—but the exact significance of the absence of night vision goggles remains a mystery. It would seem that it is another example of equipment failure. When he asked to be given a demonstration of their potential value, his request was refused. As in the case of the Roberts family, 12 months is far too long to take to get at the truth. Presumably, the memories of witnesses are beginning to fade and the trail is going cold.

Yet another example—again via my west country connection—is that of Marine Christopher Maddison, who was based at Plymouth, and whose tragic and unnecessary death on 30 March 2003 I first drew to the attention of the House in a debate many months ago. Long after he was killed, his family became aware that the circumstances were not as the Ministry had originally informed them. However, it took a BBC documentary to expose the facts. A leaked report from the official inquiry revealed that Marine Maddison was the victim of a commando operation plagued by—I quote from its report—

"bad planning, unreliable communications, inadequate equipment and poor leadership."

So it is another case involving inadequate equipment. What is more, it seems that he was yet another victim of a terrible and avoidable accident—he was killed by so-called friendly fire. That leaked report spared no sensitivities in its criticism of the original investigation. It states:

"It is the Board's view that professional inadequacies, factual errors, a lack of rigorous investigation of the facts available at the time . . . were the prime causes of the production of an inaccurate set of findings."

The House may find it difficult to believe, but the Ministry has yet to release all that material to Christopher Maddison's mother. On the sad anniversary of his death earlier this week, I heard her express understandable outrage at the way in which she has been treated by the Government who sent her son to his death in Iraq.

I have cited just three examples that are known to me personally because of my west country connections. Judging from my postbag, other service families—no doubt in the constituencies of Members here today—feel equally hurt, frustrated, or even angry at the way in which they have been treated. Whatever other lessons the Ministry of Defence is learning from its recent experience of the operations in Iraq, I hope and pray that Ministers are determined to improve the way in which they treat the relatives of those who are injured or even lose their lives on our behalf and on behalf of their country.

I have some simple questions. Why do such investigations take 12 months or more? Why are families not given more regular progress reports? Why is information so often slipped out piecemeal, with no official, let alone ministerial, overview? How can the initial investigation be so inaccurate and the eventual board of inquiry so secretive? Is it not time that a high-powered unit within the MOD, directly responsible to the Secretary of State, took responsibility for regular and effective liaison with such families? Given that in so many cases the lack of appropriate equipment seems to have been a major factor, who takes responsibility for that, who takes the blame, and who is making sure that such problems do not recur?

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All the service families with whom I have been in contact over the past year share one overriding concern—they want to be sure that their loved ones did not die in vain and that the Ministry that sent them to war will do everything in its power to avoid similar mistakes in future. I hope that all hon. Members agree that that is not an unreasonable expectation.

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