HC Deb 24 June 1925 vol 185 cc1672-80

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Commander Eyres Monsell.]

Captain GUEST

I feel that Members in all quarters of the House will gladly spare a few minutes of their time this evening to listen to two questions which I wish to put to the Secretary of State for Air dealing with accidents that have, I am sorry to say, been very numerous in the last two or three years, and to ask whether some scheme of insurance cannot be devised for the dependants, widows and children of flying officers who have suffered fatal casualties. The parachute seems to present itself as the best possible safeguard, and in this connection I would like to send the Secretary of State for Air an official report which I have received from America, showing the way in which this appliance has been successfully used, and the number of lives saved from accidents from which it was thought it was almost impossible to save. This report shows that there is prominently in the mind of the flying officer the fear of collision in squadron formation flying, and the fear of danger from firing in the air. But with this device the airman is able to alight safely on the ground, even when his machine is in flames. I would ask the Minister to give us information under the following heads: What is the general policy of the Air Ministry in this connection? What success has the right hon. Gentleman had with the experiments he has been making? What are the instructions now being given to the squadrons and training depots? And will he give us the result of any experiments he has made within the last few months?

I turn now to draw the attention of hon. Members to the question of the insurance of flying officers in general. Everyone of us must admit that we cannot compare the life and the risks attached to an airman's life with those in the other two services. The airman at the age of 17 commences his training, and daily runs a risk which is not very different to that run on active service. It is true that he. is not subject to shell fire, but the flying risks are very great, and I submit that the House and the Treasury should regard this question as quite distinct from the ordinary military or naval service. The system is that a small pension of about £100 a year is granted to the widow of any officer or man who may be killed, but I say that when you come to the question of the dependants, or even of the children, the powers resting in the Ministry are discretionary. I do not think that is satisfactory at all, because there might be some unsympathetic official, who scans the papers when the claims come in, and it is quite possible that some dependants might get nothing at all. Probably the answer will be given that the pay is considerably higher in order to cover those risks, but I do not think that is a satisfactory way out of the difficulty. One must remember that these risks are in the main taken by boys between the age of 17 and 28. They have three years' training, seven or eight years of intensive squadron training, and service at home or abroad. It is only fair to say that these risks are taken by these at certainly a most improvident age, and it is hard to expect anyone like that to put much aside, in order to insure against possible accidents. Even if he did so, I want the House to realise that the insurance rates for him are almost prohibitive.

I have taken some trouble to go into this matter, and the House will hardly believe how much extra premium the airman has to pay and what disadvantages he suffers in trying to take out anything like a satisfactory policy. I find that, first of all, he has to pay an ordinary premium rate at least four times as high as that paid by either a soldier or a sailor, and, added to that, there is what I think is the most iniquitous imposition of a heavy capital deduction should an accident occur within the first few years of the policy. I will give an illustration which speaks for itself. I take 20 years to be the extreme flying life of the average officer, and I will assume that he takes out a 20-year policy for £1,000. He has to pay in premium £70 more than the ordinary rates, that is to say, roughly speaking, £90 a year, and, if he be killed in the first year, 60 per cent. is deducted from the capital for which he has insured, so that has dependants receive only £400 instead of the original £1,000. To make the thing still more ridiculous, if he survive for 20 years, he gets back, it is true, his £1,000, but he has had the pleasure of paying £1,800 for it.

I think the Ministry, sympathetic as I know they are to the risks, and to the young officers under their charge, might, if they cared, make much better terms for the officers than they are able to make for themselves. I would submit the suggestion that a contributory scheme might be evolved, possibly of a compulsory character—that the young officers, according to their age and rank, should make the contribution which would be the ordinary contribution applicable to either a soldier or a sailor, that the State should make the extra contribution, which, in most cases, is 5 per cent. or 7 per cent., and that they should then bring their influence to bear upon the insurance companies to revise their heavy capital deductions.

I have made a calculation which almost proves to me that it would be economical in the long run to do this. I would only mention, without any desire to dwell upon it, a figure which is necessary in order to prove my case. Since 1922, as the world is aware, and no one is more sorry for it than the Members of this House, the number of flying accidents—how many have been abroad, and how many at home I do not know—have amounted to well over 100. I think the number is more like 120. The Ministry must at the present moment be paying, as a result of those accidents, between at least £11,000 and £14,000 a year, and I believe that, for something not much in excess of that amount, they could insure the whole Force, which would be a more satisfactory state of affairs for all the officers concerned. The Minister has been good enough to be in his place this evening to give us the opportunity of hearing his reply, and I and my friends who are interested in this matter are glad to see him here.

Rear-Admiral SUETER

I think all airmen ought to be grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is a former Minister for Air, for bringing this subject forward to-night. He has had great experience in the administration of the Air Service, and he speaks with great knowledge of the subject. I have raised in this House more than once the question of accidents, and I was very much perturbed the other day to see that in using a parachute for the first time a gallant airman lost his life. I should like to ask the Minister how he teaches these airmen to use a parachute? Does he have them taken up in a free balloon or a kite balloon to make their first dive? I think it is unreasonable that an airman should be taken up in an aeroplane with the engine accelerated to make his first dive. It is just like asking a seaman to go and dive in 20 fathoms of water before he has been taught to dive in 10 fathoms. My right hon. Friend nods his head. He knows perfectly well how we train our men in diving, and I think that in the Air Service they ought to be equally careful not to risk life by asking these men, though they are volunteers, to take these unnecessary risks. We used to have a firm which built parachutes, and I should like to ask the Secretary of State for Air what has happened to that firm, because I noticed the other day that he was going to America for his parachutes? We have had to get many machines from America, including the Holland submarine. She always produces very fine machines, but we ought to develop the parachute with our own firms. The parachute ought to be like the lifeboat of a ship. Every airman who is called upon to go in the air ought to go through a parachute course, and I hope the Secretary of State for Air will be able to tell us they are going to be trained in the use of parachutes. The parachute is all very fine as a lifeboat and a means of saving life in certain risks, but you want to make your machines as safe as possible. The Secretary of State for Air made a very gallant flight the other day with the Colonial Secretary to Iraq, and I have no doubt he felt great reliance on his machine. I do not think he had any accidents, and it shows that the machines were properly looked after. But you do not have the machines looked after in this country, particularly if they have been used a little, because you do not develop aeronautical engineers. You do not train them. In the Navy we train our officers and men as experts. We have torpedo experts, gunnery experts engineering experts and seamanship experts.

When I raised this question the other day I was told that in a small Service like the Air Service you do not want men shut up in watertight compartments. We have not got watertight compartments in the Navy, but we have skilled men in looking after its mechanism, and we have very few accidents indeed. If you trained some of your men in advanced courses of engineering you would have aeronautical engineers who could go round the machines and detect any faults. You may have a little knocking in the engine. You may have excessive vibration which causes fatigue in some of the metal fittings and they would detect it. I ask the Air Minister if he would go into the whole question of training real aeronautical engineers to look after the machines, particularly if they have been in flight some time, and if he would do that and develop the parachutes he would reduce accidents to a minimum.

The SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Sir Samuel Hoare)

I am sure the House is grateful to the hon. Member who raised these two very important questions. Certainly no one is better qualified to raise them than a former Secretary of State for Air. I know from what I have seen at the Air Ministry how close his attention was to these questions when he held that office. Whilst I agree with every word the two hon. and gallant Gentlemen have said about the urgent need of reducing the risk of fatal accidents to a minimum, the House should remember that year by year the number of fatal accidents in proportion to flying hours decreases. Whilst I do not wish to make any rash prophesy or to base my conclusions upon the experience of two or three months, I am glad to be able to inform the House that so far as this year is concerned, the actual number of fatal accidents is to date less than it was for the corresponding period last year and the number of flying hours is very greatly in excess of what it was a year ago. The same applies to non-fatal accidents. I can only hope that record will go on till the end of the year. At any rate, it shows that, judged by the amount of flying hours, the number of fatal and other accidents is tending to decrease every year. If my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hertford (Rear-Admiral Sueter) will allow me to say so, I think that really is the answer to the criticism that he has just made, that we have not a special branch of engineers in the Air Force. I always pay the greatest attention to any suggestion that he may make on this subject, and I will look into it again, after what he has said this evening, but I think, generally speaking, that the answer is that things, year by year and month by month, are tending to improve.

Let me come to the specific questions that have been asked me by the right hon. Member for North Bristol (Captain Guest). He asked, What is the Air Ministry's policy in regard to para- chutes? He was kind enough to say that he would send me a report of the experience gained in the use of the Irvine parachute in America. I should be very glad to receive that report. I can tell him that one of the first acts that I took, when I returned to the Air Ministry last autumn, was to give instructions for orders to be given for the Irvine parachute for the whole of the Air Force. The general policy of the Air Ministry is that every individual regularly engaged in flying duties shall be supplied with an Irvine parachute, and that there shall be parachutes available for each aircraft up to the full number of passengers carried, including the pilot. Parachutes not issued to individuals will be held on charge of the unit and maintained ready for issue as necessary. In addition to that, there will be a 25 per cent. supply of spare parachutes. That will show my right hon. and gallant Friend that we have now decided upon a policy of equipping all the flying personnel of the Air Force with parachutes. As he knows, and as we all know who have studied the question, the experience of the United States of America in parachutes has shown that they have been instrumental in saving a substantial number of lives during the last 18 months.

The second question asked was, What are the orders for training in experimental descents? At the present time the descents are being made by volunteers, and I can assure my right hon. Friend—and if he wants further assurance I can send him a copy of the Air Force Orders on the subject—that we are taking every possible precaution for ensuring the safety of the officers and men who are making these experimental descents. We are issuing instructions as to the precautions to be taken, for instance, with regard to the state of the weather, so that no descent shall be made in bad weather. We are taking precautions so that every possible security shall be taken with regard to the aeroplane itself. The hon. and gallant Member for Hertford suggested that these descents should be made with kite balloons. The descents that are being made from aeroplanes are really much easier with the precautions we are taking than descents made in kite balloons, the reason being that a parachute from a kite balloon would be less quick to open, as it should open, and the rapidity of the descent would be greater than a descent from an aeroplane. I cannot deal further with that point in the short time at my disposal, but I feel sure that I can convince my hon. and gallant Friend.

We are taking the further precaution that if any descent is made in the neighbourhood of the sea the officer who makes the descent has to be provided with a lifebelt, and motor boats or other boats in the neighbourhood are warned in case of any descent into the sea. Then there is a further question by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Bristol with reference to the progress which has been made in the equipment of the Air Force with these parachutes. So far we have equipped five units of the Air Force with parachutes, for the most part experimental units, but as I have just said we intend to equip the whole Air Force with parachutes. Our difficulty is to get these parachutes delivered quickly enough. So far as I am concerned, we are doing everything possible to hurry up the delivery of the parachutes.

Rear-Admiral SUETER

Are they being made in this country?

Sir S. HOARE

At present they are being made in America, but in the contract which I have made with the American company there is an arrangement by which a British compare will either be set up or licensed by the American company to produce the parachutes at a definite date during next year. For the moment the only company supplying them is an American company, but there is this Clause to ensure, if possible, a British company providing them, I think, in September, 1926. Then there was the further question of insurance, and a very important question it is. I do not find myself in any general disagreement with anything which the right hon. Gentleman has said. It seems to me that, whether it be from the point of view of the Air Ministry or from the point of view of the officers, it is a matter of very great importance to get some improvement made in the present insurance conditions. From the point of view of the Air Ministry, there is always the risk that, if the premium is too high and the danger of sudden death is too great, we may not get the officers and men whom we need in the Air Force.

From the point of view of the young officer it is obviously a very heavy charge upon him to have to find 5, 6 or 7 per cent. extra on the premium he is now required to pay. I would tell the right hon. and gallant Gentleman that, before he gave notice of this question, I had already arranged meetings between representatives of the Air Ministry and representatives of the Life Offices Association of England and the Life Offices Association of Scotland. They have already held a meeting, and the situation is as follows. The life companies have said that for certain reasons the statistics which they have at present are insufficient on which to base a reduction of the premium. They have asked us for a number of statistics, and we are now engaged in giving them these statistics. The House will see at once that the period in respect of which experience of air risks is available is a very short period, only four or five years. The ground is still unexplored from the point of view of life insurance, but I am at the moment in communication with the Life Offices Association and I am giving them the statistics for which they have asked. While I do not wish to be too sanguine, I hope the result of these statistics will be to get a substantial lowering in the premium now required from Air Force officers and men. If they are not successful in bringing about that reduction, I am quite prepared to consider the suggestion that has been made by the right hon. Gentleman. But until I see whether I can obtain this reduction by these means, it would be premature for me to give any further undertaking.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-nine Minutes after Eleven o' Clock.