HC Deb 03 July 1947 vol 439 cc1663-72

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [Mr. Joseph Henderson,]

11.33 p.m.

Air-Commodore Harvey (Macclesfield)

I apologise for detaining the House at this late hour, but the subject I wish to raise is the question of inquiries into civil air accidents. Unfortunately, there have been a great number of accidents during the past 12 months both in this country and more recently in the United States, and knowing the anxiety of the public and of hon. Members on both sides of the House, I decided to take advantage of this Adjournment even though it is late.

The Air Navigation Statutory Rules and Orders, 1922 (Comd. 650), gives a guide to the Inspector-General of Accidents in paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 in carrying out a preliminary investigation. It is my point, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that very little guidance is given to the Inspector-General and in any case the accident order to which I have referred is 25 years old and is completely out of date and has no bearing on conditions of civil aviation as it is today. The Minister of Civil Aviation has power to order a full legal inquiry if he so desires, but to the best of my knowledge it has only happened on three occasions—on the R101 disaster and on two other occasions. We do not want to see every air accident tied up with the legal world, for that would be costly, and, if my hon. and learned Friends present will forgive me, rather cumbersome. I would rather see aviation kept free from that type of business.

Nevertheless, the Accidents Investigations Regulations Committee held a meeting on nth February, 1944, to go into this matter to see what could be done. Mr. Morton, who is well-known in aviation circles, gave evidence and said that, in his opinion, the existing methods of investigating air accidents would very soon be out of date, particularly in operations when large aircraft were coming along. That was the view of a very experienced pilot who had 5,000 to 6,000 hours of flying. I do not think that these inquiries should be judicial in the true sense, but none the less I go so far as to say that changes should be made. It is not the fault of Air-Commodore Brown, who is Inspector-General, that the investigations are carried out in the way they are carried out. He is thought of very highly in civilian aviation circles. I would go so far as to say that the inquiries are completely unbiased. Air-Commodore Brown is given a fairly free hand by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to go into matters which pertain to accidents and bring out all the evidence.

As I see it the Inspector-General's inquiries are really fact-finding inquiries and the President has not the power to subpoena witness or take evidence on oath. That is the real weakness of the whole thing. In fact, I think the Inspector-General is in a very embarrassed position. He is employed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, and he has to investigate accidents where the Ministry themselves might be involved and might well be to blame. He is really, in fact, acting as both doctor and coroner, which is not a situation which should be allowed to continue. I discussed this matter with the British Air Line Pilots' Association and with the Guild as well as with numerous pilots who are not connected with either organisation. I am told that B.A.L.P.A. actually saw the Inspector-General in November, 1946, on accidents generally and that they discussed the question with him. Two days afterwards they wrote to me putting forward certain suggestions and asking for information. Three days later they received a little buff card which was a form of acknowledgement. That was in November of last year and they have heard nothing since. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that his Department should be improved in regard to correspondence on these very important matters. I know that it is an expanding Ministry and it has been understaffed for the past 12 months and that the industry is growing, but it is important that representations which are made to the Ministry should have proper attention given to them and replies made.

Under the present method of finding out the cause of accidents very often the pilot is to blame. He invariably gets it in the neck. After a fatal accident the pilot is seldom there to state his case. Whatever happens the pilot is usually secondary to the primary cause of the accidents. There was an accident at Speke on 16th August, 1946, and the conclusion about that accident was that it was due to faulty technique by the captain of the aircraft. I do not want to enter into the details which led up to the accident, but there was one point, apart from the weather, which was that the hangar obstructed the view from the control tower of the scene of the accident. That implicates the officials employed by the Ministry who were in the control tower, but that was not mentioned. It should have been brought out at the inquiry. Likewise there was another accident—this time a much larger one. An Avro-York crashed at Bathurst on 7th September, 1946. Actually the finding or opinion, as it is called, said that the accident occurred as a result of the captain losing control shortly after leaving the ground; the cause of the loss of control could not be determined with certainty, but that it was due to a mishandling of the controls by the captain was, it was said, the most likely explanation.

That is a deplorable finding to bring in. It would have been far better to have said nothing when the whole thing was so obscure. Certain bodies have decided that perhaps the engine failed, which might have caused this fatal accident. There are many unfortunate accidents, such as this particular one, which are better forgotten, but I do suggest that the actual finding on that occasion was very regrettable.

Wing-Commander Millington (Chelmsford)

Has the hon. and gallant Gentleman any statistics at his disposal of the number of non-fatal accidents upon which a court of inquiry has sat and found that the pilot who was still living was responsible?

Air-Commodore Harvey

No, I have not got information and it would probably be almost impossible to obtain it. If a question was put to the Parliamentary Secretary I am sure he would be unable to give it.

Many of these accidents are near misses and it would be quite impossible to investigate all such accidents. I would like to put before the Parliamentary Secretary a few suggestions for consideration by himself and his right hon. Friends. The first is that inquiries should be held in public. The second is that they should be presided over by a president with legal qualifications. The inquiry should have power to subpoena witnesses and to take evidence on oath. The body holding such an inquiry should be entirely dissociated from the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Air Ministry. It could perhaps, if necessary, come under a Law Officer of the Crown who might quite well run a small office with a team of workers to work independently of the Ministries.

We have a Civil Aviation Consultative Council of which Lord Nathan is chairman and which has 50 members. I suggest that that body should inquire into the whole method of inquiry, into air accidents and bring forward recommendations on what should be done. It is representative of the whole industry and I believe if they were to bring in evidence from outside and get down to it, we could have an up-to-date method of conducting these inquiries with as little incovenience and cost as possible to the industry as a whole.

11.43 P.m.

Mr. Beswick (Uxbridge)

As the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said, the Air Navigation Regulations under which these inquiries are held are 25 years old now. Paragraph 6 (2) says: The Inspector of Accidents may include recommendations for the cancellation, suspension or endorsement of any licence or certificate. There is no expressed power for making a recommendation on the whole system of controls which has grown up since 1922 and upon which the safety of aircraft to a very large extent depends, and which now is the direct responsibility of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the employer of the Inspector. What I want to put to the Parliamentary Secretary is this. Many responsible people feel that in the case of the Speke accident, airport control was at least partly involved. Did the report of the investigator into that accident make any recommendation about the system of airport control? Had they any power to make any recommendations about the suspension of any licences in that case?

If his answer is "Yes," then I put the following question: In the Spencer Airways crash, almost all the regulations which it was possible to break were in fact broken. Now the responsibility for allowing that aircraft to take off rested with the airport authorities, who are in the employ of the Parliamentary Secretary's Department. What suggestions or recommendations were made at the inquiry as to any alteration in the methods of the airport authorities, and, if any suggestions were made, were they acted upon, and if they were acted upon could my hon. Friend say why two months afterwards another aircraft crashed into the sea in the Channel, when again we find the pilot did not have the necessary licence for flying passengers?. How did this come about? It does really seem that the organisation for which the Ministry is responsible is to some extent at fault in these accidents. Are we sure that the powers and the status of the investigating body is sufficient to make a report on the methods of his own employer, the Ministry, which will be acted upon. I have not time to make any detailed suggestions but simply support one made by the hon. and gallant Gentleman for an urgent inquiry into the system of making inquiries.

11.46 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Cooper (Middlesbrough, West)

I think the House will appreciate the action of the hon. and gallant Member in having raised this matter. Otherwise, if such matters were not threshed out and remedies sought we should discourage people from using the civil air services. It seems that the system which applies to investigations is not liked by anyone— with the possible exception of the Ministry —either by the public, the pilots or the passengers.—[An HON. MEMBER: Or the Corporations.]—The important question as I see it is this: Even if the investigations are carried out in the most perfect way, what is done about the findings? Surely, this is the most important matter to consider in connection with air accidents. I raised this matter in a Question I put to the Parliamentary Secretary on 4th June, when he suggested from my Question that there was some implied criticism being levelled at the Corporations. The Parliamentary Secretary refuted that suggestion in his reply, but I do ask him to analyse the accidents which have taken place very carefully and see if he cannot bring pressure to bear on the Corporations to eliminate the difficulties which have arisen.

In the case of the accident to the British European Airways aircraft at Oslo on 7th August, it was indicated that the captain had not enough experience or adequate training in the let-down procedure. The Corporation should see that things like that are covered. In the accident to the aircraft of Scottish Airways on 19th December, 1946, it was stated that the captain had made an error of judgment in taking off when the aircraft was almost entirely covered by snow. Regulations should be made to prevent that sort of thing happening. In the accident to the South American Airways aircraft on 7th September, the captain's experience of Yorks was confined to very little flying time. He had never done a full-load take-off under similar conditions.

These points do suggest the most serious reflections upon the organizations of the Corporations and the firms concerned. I should like my hon. Friend, if he will not issue instructions—as he has the statutory powers to do—to see that the necessary instructions are issued by the Corporations to prevent the recurence of these events. We must learn from these serious accidents. I ask him to follow up the matter in all seriousness and see if something cannot be done.

11.49 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (Mr. Lindgren)

On behalf of my noble Friend and myself I would like to thank the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air-Commodore Harvey) for raising this matter tonight. It does enable me to make a statement in regard to the general question of accidents and accident investigation procedure. I am happy about most of the speeches made tonight because there was really very little that divides us. All are agreed that we need a procedure for accident investigation which will arrive at the cause of the accident. Having found the cause of the accident, we can proceed to take measures which will prevent other accidents from similar causes. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough West (Mr. Cooper) does not surely suggest that an accident report received by the responsible air operator, whether Corporation or Charter, is not going to be thoroughly investigated. There is machinery, and it is being tightened up. It was perfectly true that some accidents have shown that crew training was not as good as it should have been. The Corporations have always taken the necessary precautions to see that this cause does not arise again.

Mr. Cooper

Has disciplinary action been taken where justified?

Mr. Lindgren

Just because a mistake has happened, it does not always mean that disciplinary action is necessary. People do not make mistakes deliberately. If there are legal proceedings, that is completely outside the question of finding out the cause of the accident.

May I deal with the question raised by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Beswick). He referred to accidents where it had been shown that the accident arose in association with the breaking of a number of established rules and regulations. It is not the inspector's function to recommend changes of rules and regulations and legislation. It is his function to find the cause of the accident, to submit the cause to the Minister, and for the Minister and his advisers to take responsibility in regard to putting forward legislation, if it is necessary. In certain cases certificates which should have been carried by aircraft were not carried and regulations were infringed. So action was taken to insist that those certificates be carried, although some people objected to the number of such certificates, as to airworthiness, crew, etc. that had to be carried.

The question of aircraft safety in flying to and from Guernsey had been raised. It has to be borne in mind that Guernsey is outside the scope of airport management from this country, and while control would have operated had the aircraft been required to return from this country, there was no control required by the authorities in those areas. Every accident is very seriously scrutinised by my noble Friend and his advisers in the Department and we deal with everything possible arising from them.

I was very glad that the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield appreciated the very valuable work which has been carried out by the Chief Inspector of Accidents. Having said that, it may do much to assure him in dealing with the point that, while the Chief Inspector is employed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, he does not only deal with accidents arising from civil aviation, but also with those connected with the Air Ministry, the Admiralty, and the Ministry of Supply, and he makes his reports to those Ministers in the same way as to the Minister of Civil Aviation. While there may appear on the surface to be some invidiousness in his position, I think it is more apparent than real. No one has suggested that there is any interference with him in his work, and it is obvious from the type and standard of his work that there is no such interference.

The Treasury is responsible for the manner in which these inspectors are appointed, and to whom they are responsible. The Chief Inspector of Accidents is responsible to the Ministry of Civil Aviation purely for administrative purposes. All we arc concerned about is getting at the cause of the accident, and how best to find it. The hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield, gave a brief history. They first arise under the Navigation Acts of 1920 and Regulations produced in 1922 which gave the possibility first of a preliminary investigation, and second of a court which has the powers of a court of summary jurisdiction. Each Minister has only used the power of the court on three occasions, the last being the case of the ill-fated R.101. Until October of last year all inquiries were in private, and only the gist of a summary of the inspectors' report was given to those directly interested. Last October my noble Friend decided, almost immediately after assuming office, that accidents should be investigated in public, and that in the vast majority of cases the report of the inspector should be published, and also that not only the conclusions, but the evidence that went to assist the inspector in arriving at his conclusions, should be made available.

I want to emphasise that these inquiries are informal inquiries to ascertain facts. They are not inquiries to allocate liability in any way. My noble Friend holds the view—and I gather the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield, whose opinions in these matters we respect, takes the same view—that a judicial inquiry is not required. But we recognise that the present machinery does need some revision and we are looking at the whole question in the light of our experience, and in the light also of the experience of other accident investigating bodies— railway, mining, marine, and others—so that we can arrive at the best way of dealing with it. We have negotiations going on at the moment wth the Chief Inspector of Accidents and the Inspector of Railway Accidents, with a view to bringing the best of the railway accident machinery into our own. One point which we are looking at very seriously is that the Radio Officers Union, B.A.L.P.A., and other unions, in the civil aviation industry who are concerned in accidents, should have the right of representation at the inquiries in exactly the same way as the N.U.R. and the other railway unions have at railway accident inquiries.

Equally we accept the suggestion, which has already been acted upon, that the matter should be submitted to the Consultative Council for Civil Aviation, and a paper is being prepared for my noble Friend to submit to them and get their views. Everything possible will be done, every point of view will be canvassed and considered, because it is our desire that we shall get a form of inquiry which will give absolute confidence to the air operators, to the men who fly the machines, to the ground staff who assist, and to the public who travel by them. If we can secure that confidence—as I said in answer to a Question—the confidence that the Minister of Transport has secured in association with railway accidents, then we shall be very happy indeed. I am grateful for the opportunity that has been provided by the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield for me to state that we are making investigations with the possibility of changing the procedure and bringing it more into line with present day requirements. Any points put to my noble Friend will receive every consideration.

Adjourned accordingly at One Minute past Twelve o'Clock