AIRCRAFT CRASH, SICILY (REPORT) (Hansard, 19 November 1953)

§ Mr. Wedgwood Benn (Bristol, South-East)
The subject that I wish to raise tonight is the crash of the Airwork Hermes off the coast of Sicily on 25th August last year. That aeroplane contained 51 passengers and a crew of six. As a result of the crash, one member of the crew and two women passengers died and four children under the age of five were drowned. I wish to deal with the circumstances that led up to that accident, and more particularly with the way in which the Government are handling the report on that accident now in their hands.
I am grateful to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for his courtesy in agreeing, at very short notice, to answer this debate. At the same time, I know that he will acquit me of any desire to press this matter unduly upon him, as I notice from my correspondence that my first letter to him on this subject was written on 29th December last year. I have been in correspondence with him many times since, and he has also been kind enough to see me on the matter. I have decided to raise it publicly in the House only because I am quite dissatisfied with the line that he and his Department are taking upon it. I believe it is proper that an Adjournment debate should be used to focus public attention deliberately upon the Government's policy towards the report on this air crash.
I want to go very briefly into the background of the accident. The Sudan Government employs a great many people who go back and forth every year between the Sudan and this country. They work in the Sudan in the winter, and many of them come back to this country in the English summer. They have a charter arrangement with Air-work, Limited, by which they are transported at a cheaper rate than they could normally get on the scheduled air liners.
The flight which concerns me is one which took off from Blackbushe Airport on Sunday, 24th August last year. It was flying over the Mediterranean, as is customary on this journey, when it developed engine trouble. I want to make it perfectly clear to the Parliamentary Secretary that I do not intend to 1966 raise any point about the engine trouble. I have seen a note which he was kind enough to send me about this, and it is perfectly clear that one engine and then a second engine failed, and the pilot had no alternative but to "ditch" the aircraft.
It was the circumstances which followed the pilot's decision which led directly, I believe, to the unnecessarily severe loss of life. It is very difficult for us to imagine what goes on in the cabin of an airliner when there is so little time—although in this case it was as long as 10 or 15 minutes—in which people may make arrangements before the plane "ditches" on the sea. I have been in touch with all the survivors, except a few with whom I could not make contact, about the circumstances which led up to this accident.
As far as I can understand, the first thing which enters their minds is that no member of the crew came back to tell the passengers that it had been decided to "ditch" the aircraft. There were two air hostesses attached to the crew, and the passengers naturally asked questions of them, but there is no doubt at all—there is a unanimity of view about this—that although between 10 and 15 minutes elapsed between the pilot's decision to "ditch" the aircraft and the moment when it struck the water, no member of the crew was available to give information either to the air hostesses or to the passengers.
It is not part of my purpose to attack the courage, ability or integrity of any member of the crew. It is impossible for anybody who is not involved in an accident of this kind to judge the circumstances. I am directing my argument to a claim that a full report should be published—either the one which is already available or a further report. If I raise points which are critical of the behaviour of the company and crew it is not because I claim to know what happened, but because I claim that the public have a right to find out, after proper inquiry, exactly what were the circumstances.
The second point—and this seems absolutely incredible to anybody with any flying experience—is that when the air hostesses were asked how to put on and operate the life-saving devices, they were unable to tell the passengers. One air hostess was unable to find her own life 1967 jacket. Indeed, she was very anxious about it, although I do not impugn her courage. One air hostess died in the accident. But it is incredible to me that in a publicly authorised air liner—although it was privately owned—the air hostess should not be able to find her own safety apparatus or be able to inform passengers how to use theirs.
The next and far more serious thing is that the children under five years of age—of whom there were five in the aircraft—were supposed to be provided for by a large dinghy. It is obvious that the ordinary form of what we call the "Mae West" is quite unsuitable for young children. Therefore when an aircraft carries children it should contain a rubber dinghy big enough to contain the children and their parents or guardians. The Minister has admitted in correspondence that the air hostess was unable to find the rubber dinghy, and four of the five children were drowned.
One married couple lost all three children, aged five and a half, four and a half and 19 months. I do not want to bring emotion to bear in this debate, but it is intolerable that four children of that age were lost because the proper apparatus could not be found, and it is intolerable in the circumstances, that the Government should withhold the report which has already been made.
The next thing that happened to the aircraft was that the lights began to flicker, because the generator was operated off one of the engines which failed. I do not intend to go into the technical details of this crash. I am grateful to the Minister for telling me that Hermes aircraft have now been modified so that a third generator can be made available, and that special lighting can be switched on in the event of all engines failing.
The plane landed on the water, and here again there was another period of 10 minutes before it finally submerged. There was the first period of 15 minutes, when, as far as one can make out, there was no organisation of any kind for the crew to provide the safety apparatus, and a second period, from the time when the plane hit the water to the time it sank, and this immediately demonstrated further failures in the safety apparatus.
1968 In many cases the "Mae Wests" which the passengers were wearing would not inflate. Anybody who knows the old war-time type of "Mae West" knows the little bottle which is pulled down with one's hand, which breaks at the top and inflates the "Mae West" automatically. On this occasion it failed to work in many cases. I have letters from survivors in which they say, first—and this is a general defect of this type of apparatus—that it was difficult to get the bottle to press against the body with sufficient push to break its neck and, in other cases, when they did manage to do so, the apparatus was rusted or defective. It is apparent that no proper check of the safety apparatus was made before the plane took off. Further, all "Mae Wests" have little torches by means of which a survivor floating on the water can be sighted by aircraft, fishing vessels, or other craft coming to the rescue. The Minister has a report that many of those torches did not operate.
All this points, without question, to a complete failure on the part of the company to look into questions of safety, check apparatus, and so on, and there were these unnecessary casualties. I say "unnecessary," because, although an air crash normally occurs quickly—when a plane dives into the sea, crashes before landing or just after take-off—without any time for anybody to do anything, in this case there was plenty of time, if any safety training had been given to the crew or the passengers before the flight, to put that training into operation.
The final tragedy is that, although there were 51 passengers on board, and many men amongst them, no arrangement was organised by the crew for the male passengers to look after the children. The mother of the three children who were drowned was herself knocked out when the aircraft hit the water, and—though I put this forward as a case for inquiry rather than a statement of fact—I understand that she was actually trampled on by other people who were getting out of the plane.
This sort of thing could easily be avoided by proper safety control. We always laugh at boat drill when we are travelling on a transatlantic liner, because we never think of the "Queen Elizabeth" or the "Queen Mary" going down before we reach New York, but it is this basic 1969 training which prevents appalling tragedies occurring when some technical fault develops.
With the information available to me I have dealt as best I can with the circumstances of the crash. I now wish to go on to what happened after the crash occurred. The survivors were all on their way back to the Sudan. Some of them went into hospital. One girl had two children with her, was herself eight months' pregnant, and was swimming for two and a half hours in the Mediterranean before she was picked up; but at any rate she was taken to hospital at Malta, and in a day or two there were no survivors near the spot where the crash occurred.
The Minister of Civil Aviation sent Mr. Nelson, one of his safety advisers, and according to "The Times" report—the only one open to me—Mr. Nelson conducted some sort of inquiry on the spot. Amongst other people, he interviewed the captain of the plane, of whom all the survivors spoke very highly, because of his courage and skill. Mr. Nelson, although he went as the head of a sort of commission of inquiry, did not publish any report. When I raised this with him very nearly a year ago, the Minister pointed out, quite rightly, that, under the Chicago Convention, the Convention on International Civil Aviation, or whatever it is called, it is normal practice for the Government of the country in which the plane crashes to conduct the inquiry themselves, and therefore the decision was taken at that stage that there should not be any simultaneous report, and that it would have to be left to the Italian Government.
I have frequently bothered the Minister in the last six or eight months about the Italian report, and he always said, "We do not know if there will be one. We are waiting for the Italian report to come in." I do not know why, but the Italians have taken a year to produce the report, and there has been considerable delay.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. John Profumo)
I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not want to be inaccurate. I think he said that he had been told that we did not know there was to be a report. At no stage have we said 1970 we would not get a report. We always knew a report would be made, but we did not know at what period, and we did not know how long it would take to translate it.

§ Mr. Benn
It is not a very important point. I have a letter that I dictated, on the very day I saw the hon. Gentleman in March, to the mother of one of the survivors, in which I said that the Italians might not even submit a report. I had that impression, but it is of no consequence, because a report did come in. All we are discussing now is whether there should be publication of the report. The report came in a year after the accident occurred. It seems a very long time. Of course, the survivors are scattered. The crew, no doubt, have gone back on to other duties. One could, perhaps, understand why such a long period should have elapsed, but it is natural now that it has come in that I should write to the Minister and say, "Now the report is in, will you please publish it?"
I know the hon. Gentleman will not regard it as a breach of confidence if I read a letter which he wrote on 8th October in which he gave the reasons the report should not be published. I ought to explain first of all that the Minister, with great courtesy, if that is the word, sent me a copy of the report and marked it "Confidential." It was clearly impossible for me to read the report and then raise it in the House. If I were in the position of having read that report, I should now be in breach of confidence in raising it in this House. When I saw the report on my table and I read the word "Confidential" on the front page, I realised that if I read it I might well be put in the position of being unable to raise it, because he would have been able to say that I was in breach of confidence. I returned it to him unread. I am sure he will accept my word that it was unread. Indeed, I should know the answer to many of the queries I am raising if I had read it.

§ Mr. Profumo
I hope the hon. Gentlemen does realise why I had to mark it "Confidential." I did not know that he was necessarily intending to raise the matter in the House, and certainly I did not mark it "Confidential" to preclude him from raising it. I was in duty bound 1971 to see it was not circulated or published. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that.

§ Mr. Benn
It is not worth going into. It is a minor point. But I feel that I must say that if I had read the report, which was of great interest to me, I should have found myself in possession of certain information, and that then, if I raised it in the debate tonight, the hon. Gentleman would rightly have said that by so doing I was in breach of confidence. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not think I am being offensive when I say that one of the oldest ways in the world for a Minister to prevent these things from coming out is to give confidential information. If I had read the report, it would have been wrong of me to have raised it tonight.
At any rate, the Minister, in replying to me, when I asked him whether the report would be published, said: You will see from page 19"— of course I do not know what is on page 19— that though the primary cause of the accident could not be determined a number of contributory causes have been listed, which include criticisms of the crew, in particular the air hostesses, and implied criticism of the operating company. All of which appears to bear out the allegations I made earlier.
The letter went on: Had an investigation been conducted under our Accident regulations the persons blamed would have been given the opportunity to make statements, and to produce evidence and witnesses on their behalf, before the report was finalised. This elementary principle of British justice to give the accused a chance to defend himself was not followed under Italian procedure. The Minister, therefore, feels that in these circumstances it would be unjust to the crew and to the operator to give the report full publication or to place it in the House of Commons Library. This is a very serious statement for the Minister to make. He says that this report was not drawn up in conditions which gave everybody a fair chance, and yet when I wrote to him a week later and asked whether, in these circumstances, he would institute his own inquiry, he wrote: The Minister is in general agreement with their conclusions. This is the real burden of my argument. The Minister has to make up his mind 1972 one way or the other about this report. Either it is unjust to the aircrew—as it may be—and it is unjust to the company—as it may be; but in those circumstances why does the Minister decide to accept it? Why does he circulate the report to any survivors who ask for it? I could get a copy of the report tonight if I wanted to from one of the survivors in London or from the offices in London of the Sudan Government. They have copies of the report. That report is supposed to be confidential. If it is unfair to the aircrew and to the company it is quite intolerable, in my submission, that the Minister should be willing to circulate it freely to anyone who wants to see it, on the understanding it is not to be published.

§ Mr. Profumo
I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to be accurate, and it is very important that there should be strict accuracy about this. It is not for anyone who wants it, but only the people who were involved. They may see it, as the hon. Gentleman could have done, only it is marked "Confidential" for them as it was for the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. Benn
I withdraw that remark. I meant to any one of the survivors who wants it. The point is that if the report breaks every principle of British justice, it is strange that the Minister says he accepts it and should be willing to circulate it to any one of the survivors who wishes to see it, even if it is marked "Confidential."
I have written on my own authority to all the survivors I could contact, and I have a wad of letters from them. I shall not burden the House with them, but all or almost all of them agree that the position is very unsatisfactory. Some of the accounts of the personal circumstances of the crash are very moving. One I have here is from a man who says: The chief concern I have arising out or the crash is the fact that my small child had to leave the plane for the sea without any lifebelt or other means of keeping afloat. It was only the superhuman efforts of my wife which kept the child afloat for two and a half hours. I was separated from both from the moment I jumped from the plane. Many of the people have written saying, "I have no personal vindictiveness against the company," and I am not raising the question of compensation tonight, but they all say, "We believe that the failure to publish this report will make it 1973 less likely that publicity will be attached to the crash and less likely that the maximum precautions will be taken against a repetition of this sort of thing occurring."
Surely the Minister cannot be satisfied with things as they are now? What we want to know is, why was not the equipment tested for safety? What we want to know is, why were not the passengers in the plane given the most elementary safety drill? Why was not the air hostess able to know where her own safety belt was, let alone the rubber dinghy for the children under five? Why was there no guidance in these circumstances? Why, indeed, did the engines fail, which was the cause of the whole thing? Perhaps, however, that is a more straightforward technical matter. Why was there not basic organisation of the passengers by the captain of the aircraft to see that the women and children went off first? After all, there is a tradition in the Royal Navy and in the Merchant Navy that the captain leaves the ship last, and certainly there should have been arrangements whereby the passengers could have been given guidance in the moment of crisis.
I have put these questions to the Minister, and I have given him notice of them. He knows perfectly well about them, and I hope he will not give the same unsatisfactory answers he has given hitherto. Leaving aside whether the company had an opportunity to reply to this criticism—presumably they could have given evidence to the Italian Government, like everyone else—I ask the Minister to come straight to the point: does he think the report is unfair? Can he please give us reasons which in his judgment lead him to suppose that this report is unfair? Has it not paid full attention to the difficulties which faced the crew or the company? If he thinks it is unfair, I will leave that question aside for the moment. But does he think the report is wrong? Does he think the conclusions which the report reached were wrong, in addition to the unfairness by which they were reached?
Finally, there are two questions which I have already asked but which I should like him to answer. If the report is unfair and if it is wrong, why does the Minister accept it? Surely his concern is that there should be the maximum safety for British passengers, whether they fly by 1974 the nationalised Air Corporations or by private companies. If it is unfair, why send it to the survivors? If it is not, why not have a British inquiry?
We press this matter not because we have anything against Air work, Limited. I have never had any association of any kind with Airwork, Limited. I have no financial interest in this crash, on my behalf or on behalf of any of the people to whom I have written or who have written to me. We press for the publication of the report for reasons for which we should always press for the publication of similar reports: not only because we want to know whether the regulations were obeyed, so that others may see what appalling consequences come from a failure to obey regulations; but also, in the event of a crash of this kind, because we are concerned with the much bigger question whether the regulations would have been adequate even if they had been brought fully into effect. It is only by judging the regulations in force against the situation which faced the pilot and the crew that we can judge whether they are adequate.
If the Minister is not able to satisfy me tonight, I can give him a categorical assurance that this subject will be raised again and again and again in the House. I hope he will be in a position tonight to say that the Government will either institute an inquiry in Britain or will publish the report of the inquiry which they have already accepted.

§ Mr. John Grimston (St. Albans)
The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) has in my view done at least one good service, and that is in calling attention to the fact that all accidents involving aircraft, particularly fatal accidents, should be investigated and any lessons to be learned noted and applied on all other similar flights. To the extent that the hon. Member's arguments are facts or are directed towards making air travel safer. I am with him, but I detected in what he said a more sinister motive than that. I do not think the tone of some of his remarks was in any way justified or that the necessity for it was proved under the circumstances.

§ Mr. Benn
Would the hon. Member please substantiate this statement, because I made only one very slight reference to the company. I must confess that I am 1975 concerned about the matter, but if the hon. Member suggests that I have a sinister motive, he ought to substantiate the charge or withdraw it absolutely.

§ Mr. Grimston
I am grateful to the hon. Member; the purpose of my intervention is to try to substantiate it. There was little doubt from his closing remarks, that, as the hon. Member has said, he was anxious, and his anxiety clearly sprang from a wish to have something to which to point so as to establish whether or not, in his dealings with accidents in the air, my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary treated nationalised corporations on the same footing as, or a different footing from, private enterprise or any other corporation.

§ Mr. Benn
Perhaps the hon. Member will withdraw the word "sinister." It is our concern that all flying, whether by nationalised companies or by private companies, should be safer. The Minister admitted a few days ago that safety regulations for private airline companies were much lower than, or at any rate quite different from, those for the nationalised corporations. That is contained in HANSARD.

§ Mr. Grimston
It is quite clear from what the hon. Member has said that I am very close to the point which he is trying to make, and I hope that what I am going to say will mean that at least somebody's anxieties—quite clearly expressed anxieties—will be set at rest.
In the earlier part of his remarks, the hon. Member made what clearly were detailed criticisms of some of the actions of the members of the crew. He used these words, which I took down: That there had not been even elementary safety training given to the crew. That is really quite wrong, and it is a very unfortunate thing to have said about this aircraft crash. These aircraft were bought by Airwork, with which I have no connection at all, from B.O.A.C. They were Hermes aircraft, and as far as I know, in this case one engine failed, the propellor came off and took the propellor off the other engine on the same side. This was at night, and the pilot was faced with the prospect of flying at night over country which contained very high mountains, and also over the sea.

§ Mr. Benn
I am afraid the hon. Member is mixing this crash with another Hermes crash, when the propellors came off. If he intends to criticise my facts, I hope he will not mix the Hermes crash of 25th August over Sicily with the earlier Hermes aircraft crash which gave even greater reason to doubt the safety standards maintained by this company.

§ Mr. Grimston
The hon. Members asks me not to confuse two Hermes crashes. One occurred over land at night in France and one occurred in which the aircraft was "ditched" in the sea off Sicily. Is not that so? We know all about the other. This particular aircraft was a former B.O.A.C. aircraft and was on the first day of a flight from this country. The pilot was faced with the extremely difficult task of putting the aircraft down into the sea at night. His lights had failed and he could not even see his distance above the water. Indeed, he could not be quite sure that he was above the water.

§ Mr. G. Lindgren (Wellingborough)
The hon. Member says this was the first flight out of this aircraft. Does he mean that this company start to operate without a proving flight?

§ Mr. Grimston
It was the first day out of the flight from the U.K.

§ Mr. Lindgren
Surely the hon. Member has inferred that this aircraft had been picked up from B.O.A.C. and was on its first flight.

§ Mr. Grimston
If I gave that impression, I apologise. It is not what I intended to say. This was the first day's flight. As the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East said, it was on its way from Blackbushe to the Sudan. On the evening of the first day these two engines failed at night as the aircraft was making for Malta. There were very high mountains not far away and also much of the route is over the sea. The aircraft lights had failed. It was an extremely creditable job for the pilot to have put the aircraft down on to the sea without killing every one by the impact. That was a very remarkable technical job indeed, and the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East did not mention a word of it.

§ Mr. Benn
I do not know how much preparation the hon. Member has done for the debate, but he should recollect 1977 that in fact I paid tribute particularly to the captain of the plane, whose courage and skill"— I thought I used those words; if-not, I quote them now from one of the letters received— prevented a far worse accident from occurring. There were five other members of the crew not engaged in the "ditching" who might have given instructions to the passengers sitting in the back not knowing what on earth was going on.

§ Mr. Profumo
Is the hon. Member suggesting that five members of the crew merely sat in the back and took no action at all? I am afraid this debate may get a little overheated if we do not return to the serious level which I know both the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) and my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. J. Grimston) desire. I had to intervene there because in an attempt to answer quickly we may get confused. What the hon. Member said was certainly not the case.

§ Mr. Benn
I was air-crew during the war and I know perfectly well that no member of the crew sits and does nothing. But I make the charge, which I repeat willingly, that in the 15 minutes between the decision being reached and the moment the plane was ditched a member of the crew should have been detailed by the captain to go and tell the passengers how to find the apparatus, how to put it on and what was happening. That was a perfectly reasonable criticism to make of the crew.

§ Mr. Grimston
I think both sides of the House really want this debate to be on a serious level.

§ Mr. F. Beswick (Uxbridge)
If the hon. Member intends to intervene in the debate he should try to maintain the same standard as that set by my hon. Friend in opening the debate.

§ Mr. Grimston
The tribute which I would certainly pay to the captain has now been paid, but it is still wrong to say that there has not been even elementary safety training given to the crew. The basic reason why the accident was not infinitely more severe was because the captain, in particular, was not only an exceptionally able man, but brought 1978 off an exceptionally skilful technical feat in "ditching" this aircraft at night with no lights to help him.

§ Mr. Benn
Basic safety training refers to training in the use of safety apparatus. I was speaking specifically about whether the crew knew where the safety apparatus was, knew how to operate it and told people what to do. In that connection they were unable to find two pieces of safety apparatus, and I regard that as failure to understand the basic principles of safety training. That has nothing to do with the flying at all.

§ Mr. Grimston
I am delighted that we now have this much more closely defined than I previously understood from the remarks of the hon. Gentleman. It seems to me that the ditching was exceptionally skilfully carried out. A captain in those conditions certainly has not the time to spare for briefing junior members of his crew, who should know their job without word from the captain. In that, at least, I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
He expressed his anxiety as to whether or not accidents involving private enterprise airlines are treated differently from others. There are in the Library—and I have them here—reports of six accident inquiries since the present Government came to power, involving accidents to aircraft operated by civil firms. Some of them are serious accidents, like the one of the 14th June to a Consul aircraft in the Channel. Some of them are relatively minor accidents, involving one or two people and only minor injuries. There can, therefore, be no reasonable call for anxiety on the part of the hon. Gentleman as to whether my hon. Friend treats the private enterprise airlines and the nationalised airlines in different ways when it comes to investigating accidents.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, no accident should be allowed to take place without the causes being most scrupulously investigated. No doubt the Minister will tell us more about this matter. I understand that the powers of the Minister are derived from legislation which, I think, was passed by the Socialist Government shortly after the war. If these powers are not enough, then I, at least, will support the appeal of any hon. Member of this House to widen them, so that we in Britain can obtain the full benefit of any lesson that 1979 may be learned from any accident which takes place in any part of the world.

§ Mr. G. R. Mitchison (Kettering)
I am certainly not going to touch on the circumstances of this accident. I am not going to make any technical observations about civil aviation, because I have never been anything but one of the helpless passengers who are very efficiently carried in civil aircraft from time to time.
I am, however, profoundly disturbed by the situation in which this matter has been left. If I had any doubt whatever that something more needed to be done, the course of the debate today would have removed that doubt. I hope that the Minister will be good enough to correct me if I am wrong in what I am about to say. I understand that it is not disputed that the Minister has power to hold what is sometimes called a commissioners inquiry.
I understand, too, that the Chicago Convention, to which I shall be referring in a moment, places a responsibility on the Italian authorities to investigate this accident. I do not understand, however, that the Chicago Convention in any way precludes the Minister from holding an inquiry in this country, and if I am wrong I should like to be told so at once.

§ Mr. Profumo
It does not preclude my right hon. Friend from doing so, and I hope to explain in a moment the actions which my right hon. Friend has taken. There is nothing to preclude it.

§ Mr. Mitchison
I am glad to hear that. I also assume—and again I should like to be corrected if I am wrong—that the relative part of the Chicago Convention, which is, I believe, Annexe L, has now been ratified. That matter stands as I put it just now. What I want to point out is the position in which those responsible for the aircraft itself, those who were at the time responsible for navigating her—I use the word "navigating" in a very lay sense—and those who were in any way injured by the accident or had relatives who were injured or died in the accident are left.
The present position is this. The Italian authorities have held an inquiry. 1980 They were no doubt entitled to do so. The Minister has sent an inspector—and I hope again that he will correct me if I am wrong—to the scene of the accident, and some sort of investigation has been held by him out there. Whether his inspector attended or took any part in the Italian proceedings I do not know. It is perfectly clear that the Italian authorities have come to a conclusion which puts very serious blame, rightly or wrongly—I am not concerned about that at the moment—on two of the classes of people which I have just mentioned—that is to say, those who were responsible for the aircraft, if I may put it in that way, and those who were responsible for running her on this occasion.

§ Mr. Profumo
I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman has had some access to this report. If not, I do not know from what information he is saying that the report gives very serious criticism on these two classes of people.

§ Mr. Mitchison
I am in the habit of accepting what my hon. Friend says and has just said, and which, if the Minister wished to correct, he had ample opportunity to correct at the time. I am not concerned with the precise degree of seriousness. The point is that criticism and serious criticism, in an accident which led to grievous loss of life, has been made in an Italian report by the Italian authorities. That is all I am concerned with. If the Minister disputes what I have said, I should like him to say so. If there is no criticism so much the better.

§ Mr. Benn
The passage of the criticism was one which I read from a letter which I received from the hon. Gentleman. I have no knowledge of what is in the report, only what the hon. Gentleman tells me, and that information was available to the whole House when I read it.

§ Mr. Speaker
I would ask hon. Members to conform to our usual custom of making speech with fewer interruptions. This has been like the Committee stage of a contentious Bill. Hon. Members ought to say what they have to say and listen to what others have to say.

§ Mr. Mitchison
The matter is now perfectly clear, not only on what my hon. Friend said when he was speaking, but on what the Minister wrote to him at 1981 the time. That report has been circulated—presumably, again marked "Confidential"—to a number of people. Its contents have in part been divulged, without any pledge of confidence, by the Minister to my hon. Friend. My hon. Friend, to whom we ought to be grateful for raising this matter in the House, has, quite properly, repeated in public some of the things that were said by the Minister with regard to that report.
I suggest to the Minister that there are very good reasons for not leaving people in the position in which they have been put by that procedure. Here are people responsible for the aircraft; here are others concerned with the running of it, who are known to have been criticised by a foreign Government or by foreign authorities in connection with an accident which led to serious loss of life, and which certainly no one in this country would wish to treat lightly.
Surely, these people ought to be given the opportunity of defending themselves and of making on their own behalf the kind of case which the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. J. Grimston) at points seemed inclined to make for them. This is not a matter which ought to be decided either by an investigation and a report, in which these people have had no opportunity of stating their case, or by a discussion in the House, in which, obviously, we cannot possibly assume the functions of a competent—I was almost tempted to add "or even a sensible"—tribunal.
As the matter stands, it seems to me mere common fairness to the people concerned to let them have a proper investigation. It is not disputed that we have power to do it. It is not disputed that, whatever the Minister may have to say about the rules of international courtesy or the like, the Chicago Convention does not prevent us from doing that. I cannot help believing that if this had been an accident to a British ship instead of to a British aircraft, the fact that it happened in some other country would certainly not have prevented a proper inquiry from being held under the Merchant Shipping Acts and that at that inquiry there would have been what there ought to be at any such inquiry: a full opportunity for those who have in any way been attacked or criticised to defend themselves.
1982 I do not know how good the criticisms are, I do not know how good the defence may be—I am not concerned with that—but the plain English of the matter is that these men have had uncommonly nasty things said about them. Any criticism of a man's conduct, whether he is a manufacturer or is someone engaged with running an aircraft, in a matter which involves a fatal accident is necessarily a very nasty thing to say about him.
I hope—surely, all of us hope—that those criticisms were largely unfounded. As a mere lawyer I am bound to say that if there were a court in which one could criticise a man and then did not hear what he was going to say in reply, it is quite likely that the results would be extremely ill-founded. After all, we are speaking in the British Parliament. We are appealing to a British Minister and asking him to see that British justice is done to his fellow countrymen—that is exactly what this comes to.
If the views of the Chicago Convention on international comity or anything else interfere with the Minister's doing what we are asking him to do, the sooner he gets a proper convention to oblige him to do it in a proper case, such as this appears to be, the better for all concerned. If there is any obligation that, in his opinion, prevents him from doing it now, the sooner he resiles from that obligation, no matter what offence it may cause to any foreign Power, the better in the interests of this country, in the interests of safety in air transport, and in the interests of those who are concerned in earning their living partly in the manufacture of, and attending to, aircraft and partly in their operation. I do not believe that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary would disagree with that view.
Look at the alternative. If this report is perfectly right, if no injustice whatever has been done, we would come to the same result and there is no harm. But there remains something else. Suppose that one of the affected people chooses to take proceedings in court—very likely they may not do so; people are not always in a position to do these things, especially in a complicated case of this sort, notwithstanding the Legal Aid and Advice Act, which the Labour Government introduced. If any of these people take proceedings in court, there would then be an investigation by a court in 1983 this country which would deal with exactly the same sort of thing as a commissioner's inquiry would have dealt with. It was to avoid that kind of thing happening over accidents at sea, in the first place, and, I assume, accidents in the air now, that legislation has been brought in, laws have been made, the procedure has been established and the rest of it, by which one general inquiry is held before a person of high competence in cases of this sort. Surely it is right that that should be so.
If there are to be a number of individual inquiries, they will be approached from a different point of view. There would be a question of the burden of proof and all the rest; the final issue is one of liability in a particular case. What is really wanted is an inquiry into public safety in these matters. That is the fundamental purpose of all these inquiries, in order to achieve public safety at sea or in the air. If there are proceedings in court afterwards, we would be having exactly what these inquiries were set up to replace. We have had inquiries at sea and there have been air inquiries to deal with the general question of public safety. We might have all the facts out in the court. Nothing would be kept back at that inquiry in court, but it would be got from the wrong end.
Therefore, I hope that the Minister will reconsider this matter. I know he has refused to have a proper, formal commissioner's inquiry, but let him remember the stage that the matter has now reached. Let him remember the position in which those concerned are now placed, and let him set common justice and the best interests of safety in the air above any question of personal pride or of standing by what was said before in the matter. The circumstances have changed, and I believe that the House would welcome on the part of the Minister an acceptance, as the circumstances now are, of a formal commissioner's inquiry into this case. As I see it, that is the only satisfactory solution.

§ Mr. F. Beswick (Uxbridge)
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) disclosed a situation which on any showing is unsatisfactory. He disclosed it in a very restrained manner. 1984 It was a pity that the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. J. Grimston) did not say what he had to say in an equally restrained manner. It was quite unworthy of him that he should say that my hon. Friend had any sinister motive in bringing forward this matter on the Adjournment.
The hon. Member did make some reference to the method of inquiry in this country which was developed by the Labour Government. As a matter of fact, the procedure for inquiries was not set up in 1946 and left there. There were developments in subsequent years, and the trend of them was to make it possible for the public to know what was going on at these inquiries. It was to give them the fullest possible information. We first of all said that where there was any public interest the report should be published, and then we went on to recommend that these inquiries should be held in public where there was known to be a considerable public interest.
I am not concerned with the facts of this particular accident. I am not going to try to criticise or justify anything concerned with it. What I should like to know is something more about the facts of the accident. My hon. Friend has given us enough information to make me want to read the report, and I would have thought that those who try to take an interest in matters of air safety should be allowed to see it.
I understand that the Minister has accepted the report. I would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would say whether that is so. The acceptance of a report implies the acceptance of the findings, but according to what my hon. Friend says, the Minister does not accept certain of the findings. He holds that the method of inquiry was unsatisfactory. I am bound to say that I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary if he said, as apparently he did in his letter, that it was an unfair method of inquiry, and that no provision was made for evidence to be given either by the operator or by the other affected people and, in particular the aircrew.
In this country we see to it now that opportunities are given for all interested parties to give evidence, and, indeed, to cross-examine witnesses. What seems to arise in this matter is that we ought, 1985 through the appropriate international organisation, to get some uniformity of method of inquiry. That would seem to be an obligation upon us. If there is any particular country whose method of inquiry is known to be unsatisfactory by our standards, then equally there is an obligation upon us, when an accident takes place in the territory of that country, to make some alternative arrangements by which we can hold an inquiry ourselves, the report and the findings of which we should be prepared to publish.
We come to this position. Either the Minister accepts that this report is a fair one, in which case we should be allowed to see it; or if it is an unfair one, then there is an obligation upon him to hold an inquiry under our form of procedure and subsequently publish the report which the court sees fit to present. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to satisfy us on this point.

§ Mr. G. Lindgren (Wellingborough)
There is one point I should like to put before the Parliamentary Secretary replies. These accidents are very distressing and, whatever type of inquiry is held, something is always likely to go wrong. It will be within the recollection of those Members who are interested that during the days of the Labour Government there was a tragic accident at a Northern airport in this country. All the formal procedure of public inquiry was gone through, but it was the contention of my noble Friend who was then Minister of Civil Aviation that the facts showed a different conclusion to that drawn by the president of the court. What happened then? My noble Friend added a preface to the report stating that he disagreed with the findings for certain reasons, and he published the report. That caused a terrific storm, because the president of the court was a lawyer, and for some reason it seems that a layman must not criticise a lawyer, even if the lawyer goes wrong.
I know that the present Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary would be the last persons to hide or hush up anything at all. But when any report is withheld, there are always unkind persons who will say that that is done in order to hide something from the public. 1986 Suspicions are aroused, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) suggests. I would suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary for the consideration of his right hon. Friend that if this report is not fair for one reason or another, or if the Minister does not accept its conclusions, he should at least publish the report and follow the example of his predecessor in office and add a preface setting out his attitude and why he has come to that conclusion.
If that is done everything is open and above board, and anyone trying to make use of wrong information and facts is immediately exposed. The experience of my noble Friend, to which I have made reference tonight, may be helpful in this instance. I should like to conclude by associating myself with my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Beswick) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East for the manner in which he put this rather delicate issue before the House.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. John Profumo)
May I join with the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren) in paying my tribute to the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) for the way in which he deployed his arguments and, indeed, for calling this matter to the attention of the House and giving me an opportunity of making clearer a situation which appears to be a little clouded.
I apologise in advance if I do not reply to some of the many points which have been made this evening, and I can assure hon. Members that, if I leave some of them unanswered, I am ready to be questioned during the course of my remarks. There is one further assurance I should like to give the House. Although I see no reason to change the view to which my right hon. Friend and I have come on this matter, I will most certainly read very carefully the evidence which has been produced tonight, and will call to my right hon. Friend's attention what has been said for his earnest consideration particularly about this sort of problem in the future.
I am in a difficulty, and I am sure the House will sympathise with me in this. We are here discussing a report which 1987 deals with the circumstances of a very serious air disaster which we have, rightly or wrongly, decided not to make public, and it may be difficult for me to take up some of the points which have been mentioned by hon. Members without, in fact, doing what is tantamount to making public the contents of the report.
We certainly have no desire to hide anything, and I am glad that the hon. Member for Wellingborough made that point. I believe that I do not need to emphasise it. There is no question of our wishing to conceal anything at all, but my right hon. Friend feels that we must stick to certain principles. Therefore I find it difficult to know exactly how to deal with the accusations which have justly and fairly been made by the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East.
The circumstances in which this serious disaster took place are well known to the House and hon. Members would not wish me to go into them in any detail. I shall merely make the point that the disaster was due to engine failure of a Hermes aircraft. In these technical discussions we are in some danger of giving a false impression to those who might wish to fly in the future. As everyone knows, the Hermes is a very good aircraft indeed and certain modifications have taken place to its engines, well known to all hon. Members here who take an interest in aviation, which make it an entirely reliable and safe type of aircraft. I would not wish the idea to go abroad that there was something wrong with it. As the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East said, this tragic affair caused a loss of life, and I am grateful to have this opportunity of expressing our deepest and sincerest sympathy and regret.
Now let me try to deal with some of the points which were raised. First, an Italian commission of inquiry was set up in accordance with the provisions of Article 26 of the Chicago Convention. A senior inspector of the Accidents Investigation Branch of my Department represented the United Kingdom during the inquiry. The Italian commission made a thorough investigation of the circumstances of the accident and the Chief Inspector of Accidents in general agrees with the contents of the report. There may have been some slight confusion here. It was suggested that either 1988 my right hon. Friend does agree with the report or that he does not. He does agree with the findings of the report. He agrees that the report was carefully and genuinely carried out and he is in general agreement with the findings of the Italian court.
The points which hon. Gentlemen have made tonight can be summarised as follows first, that full publicity should be given to the circumstances of the accident by publication of the report; secondly, that if my right hon. Friend is not prepared to publish the Italian report, he should now institute a separate inquiry, the report of which could be published.
First, with regard to publication of the report. United Kingdom accident regulations require that anyone who is likely to be blamed or criticised shall be given an opportunity of producing evidence and cross-examining witnesses. Under Italian procedure this opportunity was not given. This does not mean that the report was not a good report or that it was not a just one.

§ Mr. Profumo
The hon. and learned Member knows much more about the law than I do, but I have seen the report. He expressed doubt as to whether someone would take legal action, but the point is that this was not a public inquiry but a private one, and therefore nobody on whom any blame may have been cast could be put in any difficulty. In a moment I shall go into the reasons for having these inquiries at all.
The report was private but, owing to the fact that we felt we could not publish it in this country, I felt bound to circulate it under confidential cover to the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East, who has taken a deep interest in the matter, and to those who were affected by the accident. I do not think there has been any question as to the way in which the report was compiled or that the inquiry was unfair to anybody. We have had no complaints that it was unfair.

§ Mr. Beswick
The hon. Gentleman has not said why the decision was reached not to publish it.

§ Mr. Profumo
I have not quite reached that point; I apologise for being long-winded. As I was saying, under the 1989 Italian procedure the opportunity was not given. If I may digress here, there was nothing in the letter which I sent to the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East to suggest that there was serious criticism. I did not put that in my letter. I said: include criticisms of the crew, in particular the air hostesses. Do let us get this into its right perspective, because, when we have a discussion of this kind, the more we get into it, the more people may go slightly off beam.
As there was criticism levelled at the members of the crew, one of which was the dead air hostess, it was decided that it would be unfair to those concerned and, indeed, to the relatives of the dead girl, to publish the report since it is one of the elements of British justice that an accused should be permitted to defend himself.
That is the basic reason why we have not published the report, and in a moment I will come to what the report seeks to do. I have sent copies of it to interested parties and I am prepared to send it to any others, but I could not lay it in the Library or circulate it widely since that would be tantamount to publication. I think the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East realises that either it must be published or circulated to those particularly concerned. I do not see how publication could confer any additional benefit, in view of the fact that the interested parties can obtain copies of this report, and that follow-up action indicated in it has been and is being taken at the present time.

§ Mr. Beswick
The idea of publishing these reports is precisely so that the public can assure itself that follow-up action has been adequate. With respect, it is not enough for the Minister to say that he has done his job properly; the public must be able to assure itself that the job has been done properly.

§ Mr. Profumo
With great respect, that is not the reason for publishing the report. The Minister has the right, indeed the duty, to publish a report if he feels that by publication anything can be done to stop that kind of accident happening again. There is not widespread public concern about this, and I have assured the House that follow-up action has been and is being taken. It boils down to a question of degree, but the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Beswick), who occupied my position for some time, will realise 1990 that the Minister is given the discretion on publication. We do not want to cause alarm and despondency by publishing reports unless any good can be gained thereby. The Minister would only consider publication if it would make something clearer which would prevent a repetition.

§ Mr. Benn
Is it not perfectly clear in this case that the accident was made far worse because simple, basic principles of safety were disregarded, and that if the report were published it would bring home to people the importance of understanding safety drill and doing it?

§ Mr. Profumo
There we are getting down to details. I am on difficult ground here because we are getting into the realms of the report itself. I assure hon. Gentlemen that I am not trying to get out of this in any way, but I must be careful. There is no reason to think, from the report or from any other source from which we could get information that the operating company had not complied with the regulations which existed at the time.
Although there has been a certain amount of blame attached to the operators and indeed to members of the crew for certain minor things which happened after the engine failure, I can assure the House categorically that there was no indication that either the company or the crew had failed to carry out existing regulations. That is rather important. But as accusations were made and blame was laid, it would be wholly wrong to publish that Report when these people had not had the opportunity of defending themselves and when at least one is dead. I do not expect all hon. Members to agree with me, but that is the reason why my right hon. Friend decided not to publish.
I was asked about the possibility of setting up a separate United Kingdom inquiry. A thorough investigation was made by the Italian authorities, and it seems clear to my right hon. Friend that no further light could be thrown on the cause of the accident, and that that is the important point. He is satisfied, from the Italian report and on the information he has, that the cause of the accident is perfectly clear and that it would serve no useful purpose to have a separate United Kingdom inquiry. Nor would it serve a useful purpose in increasing the safety of air transport, because any action 1991 which, as a result of the existing report, it was necessary to take in changing regulations has been taken or is being taken at the present time.
I hardly like to mention the next point, but it is that if we decided in this case to have a separate court of inquiry it might well be regarded by the Italian Government as a reflection upon their thoroughness and competence, and as my right hon. Friend sees no reason to cast that reflection it does not seem right that he should have a further inquiry in this country.

§ Mr. Mitchison
I should like to put two points to the hon. Gentleman. First of all, the hon. Gentleman told the House quite frankly a short time ago that it was one of the principles of British justice that a man who is accused should not be condemned unheard. If I gather rightly from what the hon. Gentleman has said, the criticisms made against the people concerned that matter are criticisms which they have never had the opportunity to answer and which nevertheless the Minister is accepting. They may be right, but have these people had justice? That is the first point.
As to the second point, I notice that at the end of the Report of the 1946 Inquiry, on page 45 of Cmd. 7564, an undertaking was given by Lord Nathan, the then Minister for Air, at the instance of Viscount Swinton, to pursue negotiations with other countries with a view to getting the publicity for the proceedings and results of these inquiries which I understand to be given almost invariably in this country when there is a question of loss of life. Has that been done in this case?

§ Mr. Profumo
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that almost invariably a Minister in this country publishes a report where there is loss of life? With great respect, that is not so. It is not incumbent upon the Minister to do that.

§ Mr. Beswick
An undertaking was given that it would be done.

§ Mr. Profumo
Except in special circumstances, and this is a report made by a foreign Government. Incidentally, I was about to ask the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) if he would kindly sit down, but I see 1992 that he is merely moving to another seat. I thought for a moment that he was coming to me. I was getting a little frightened that he was about to attack me across the Floor of the House.
As I said, this inquiry was carried out by a foreign Government and the undertaking given by Lord Nathan added riders and corollaries in the case of accidents and investigations in other countries. But this does link up with the first question—that of justice. Here we are working on a well-established precedent for the publication of reports. That precedent is that if somebody is accused during an investigation and for some reason has not had the chance of defending himself personally or through a lawyer—and through no act of our own that happens in a foreign investigation—that would be a reason for the Minister not publishing a report.

§ Mr. Mitchison
We do not carry the Outlawries Bill far enough.

§ Mr. Profumo
I am not saying that if an investigation took place in this country we would not have taken what we called "Regulation 7 (5)" action, but it was not done in this case. My right hon. Friend feels that the investigations have been most thoroughly carried out and that the general conclusions as to the cause of the accident are right. I need not remind the hon. and learned Member of the principles underlying British justice. It was for that reason that, in the circumstances presented to him, my right hon. Friend felt that it would be wrong to publish the Report.

§ Mr. Mitchison
I asked for an inquiry in this country, a proper one.

§ Mr. Profumo
I thought that I had answered or at least tried to answer that and had said why we felt it wrong to have an extra inquiry in this country. Perhaps I can strengthen that point a little further. What are our reasons for holding accident investigations at all? I think that that point is germane to this debate. There are two main reasons. The first is to discover the cause of the accident. Let us apply that to this case. Here were an accident on which, under international convention, a foreign Government had held a court of inquiry and had established without doubt at all to themselves or to the operators or to 1993 us the cause of the accident. It was engine failure, and since then action has been taken with regard to Hermes aircraft. That was the primary cause of the accident.

§ Mr. Benn
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not say that I am quibbling when I say that the cause of the accident was the absence of dinghies. If the hon. Gentleman says that the accident—that is the loss of life—was due to engine failure, it is not the whole of the story.

§ Mr. Profumo
I said that the primary cause was engine failure and I was going to expand on that a little. In the course of the inquiry the contributory causes to which the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East referred were investigated. I have only one criticism to make of that speech, and I hope that he accepts it in the spirit in which it is made. It is that when one has not the whole picture it is a little dangerous to draw conclusions. I know that the hon. Gentleman has made every possible effort to get all the information available from survivors, but he has not read the report.

§ Mr. Benn
But, if I had read the report, I could not have made my speech. The hon. Gentleman has got me in a cleft stick.

§ Mr. Profumo
So the hon. Gentleman has me. All I meant was that the report indicates certain reasons why certain things happened. The failure of the light happened because there was no auxiliary engine. The very failure of the light was one of the main reasons why the escape equipment could not be found. I have been down in an aeroplane in an emergency landing though, thank heaven, not in water. Hon. Members have no great need to draw on their imagination to think of what happens to the best crews, whether of nationalised enterprises, the R.A.F., or private civil aviation, when there are a great number of passengers including children and women on board when there is an emergency landing. There is bound to be a certain amount of confusion and chaos. If there are no lights it is easy to imagine that if people find that belts for which they are groping are under their feet are being jerked about there is bound to be a certain amount of chaos. Although there has been some criticism here, I am satisfied 1994 that it would be wrong to over-estimate and over-do the criticism. Now there will be auxiliary lighting and we hope that such a thing will not happen again.
There has been a combination of failures, but none of them could be attributed to the fact that the company had not paid due regard to the safety regulations. In regard to the inflated "Mae Wests" and the C.O.2 bottles, hon. Members will know how easy it is to dislodge the nozzles by a knock of the elbow. Hon. Members may think that these are interesting explanations but something should be done about it. I can assure the House on that. Follow up action has been taken. That is the second reason for having an investigation, to discover the contributory causes and to try to see that such an accident will not happen again.

§ Mr. Beswick
That may be the reason for holding an inquiry, but the reason for publishing a report is that the House may be assured that the faults which have been disclosed have in fact been remedied and that, if necessary, we can question the Minister concerned about the particular action that has been taken.

§ Mr. Profumo
I was trying to explain a little more of the circumstances of the crash in order to allay suspicion in the minds of hon. Members. If we carried the point put by the hon. Member to its logical conclusion, the Minister would never have the right to refuse to publish a report. Hon. Members would say, "We are not satisfied. You are not right about this. We want to know and we have some suspicion." In that case it would be no good having this "7 (5)" action which has the effect that if someone is accused and has not had a chance of defending himself, the Minister need not publish the report. What is the good of that if hon. Members, or the newspapers, can say that the Minister is trying to hide something?
I say the two main reasons why the court of inquiry is set up are to discover the cause of the accident and to see that these things shall not happen again. In the opinion of my right hon. Friend, those two objects have been wholly achieved. Follow-up action has been taken and the cause of the crash has been clearly established. The only thing which prevents us publishing the report is that people who were in some way accused did not have a chance of defending themselves. 1995 The task of finding out the cause of the accident has been achieved and we are satisfied that the regulations will be changed and anything which was at fault will be changed in the future.
One hon. Member said he thought we ought to have published the report in order to have maximum publicity. I hope the debate we have had tonight has given very considerable publicity, (a) to the seriousness of the accident; (b) to the fact that we have most carefully considered the policy of publishing and not publishing; and (c) to the great sorrow and regret which the whole House feel for those who have suffered or have friends or relations who suffered in the accident.

§ Mr. Ede (South Shields)
I am quite sure everyone in the House will agree that we have had a most courteous and painstaking reply by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that his right hon. Friend, when he reads the OFFICIAL REPORT, will feel that he has not been inadequately represented here this evening. In fact, I hope that the Test Match selectors, when Bailey gets too old to maintain his wicket for a long time, will have regard to the prowess of the hon. Gentleman as a stone-waller.
I am bound to say, having listened to what the hon. Gentleman said, that I do not think he has made an adequate answer to the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). I should have thought that if it is not desired to have a further inquiry it should at least be possible to afford anyone who is criticised in the report—and who, as I understand, has seen the report—an opportunity of making a statement that could be published as an appendix to the report.

§ Mr. Beswick
There is a precedent.

§ Mr. Ede
That seems to me quite a reasonable proposition. I have every sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman 1996 said in regard to the lady who, I understand, was criticised—at any rate so he has told us this evening—and who perished in the accident. A similar thing happened in regard to that terrible railway disaster at Wembley, where considerable criticism was levelled at the engine driver of one of the trains involved. The man was dead, but it did not prevent the report being published and most people accepted the findings. The man clearly could not give evidence as he was dead in the accident and had no opportunity for stating his case.
I do not know how much is left in the report after what we have heard from this side of the House and what the hon. Gentleman has told us. I was beginning to think that possibly his speech would have been shorter if he had read the report to us. I wonder whether there is much left now and, if so, whether it would be better to recognise what I think is desirable: to carry out the practice that these reports should be published and, if anyone is criticised and did not have the opportunity of defending himself, giving that person an opportunity of making a statement which could be added to the report as an appendix.
I throw that out to the hon. Gentleman and I trust that his right hon. Friend, when he considers the debate, will realise that there is strong feeling about it, backed by two of my hon. Friends who have been Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry. Then it would be understood that anyone who fails in his duty—which is not an unimportant thing—will have any lapse that may have occurred made public and will be given an opportunity, if it is a court of inquiry not conducted as an English court usually is, to make a statement in his defence so that it may appear side by side with any criticism made of him.
I wish to end by expressing the thanks of everyone on this side of the House to the hon. Gentleman for the great courtesy he showed in giving way and the very full answer he gave.