HC Deb 16 March 1989 vol 149 cc629-36

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-[Mr. John M. Taylor.]

10.2 pm

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe)

This is a very sad but important parliamentary occasion and one that is shamefully overdue. It is the first time that the House has been able specifically to discuss the deeply grievous accident to the British Airtours Boeing 737 at Manchester airport on 22 August 1985, in which 55 people died and many others were severely injured when their holiday jet burst into flames on the runway.

The accident happened when the House was in recess, so there was no ministerial statement; no oral questioning of the Secretary of State by Members with constituents who were killed or hospitalised; no parliamentary tributes to emergency services which are among the finest in this country; and no opportunity for the House to express the condolences and sympathy which customarily go to the bereaved and those injured in major accidents.

That being so, right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House expected an oral statement by the Secretary of State when his air accidents investigation branch finally reported on the Manchester accident on Monday this week. It was then more than three and a half years after a major accident about which there had never been a ministerial statement, but the right hon. Gentleman did not make a statement. In fact, he had already made it clear in a letter to me that he would be doing no more on the day of publication than place some copies of the report in the Library.

The Secretary of State's decision to release the report without comment is widely resented, not least among the bereaved and injured. There is also deep and widespread resentment about the Civil Aviation Authority's decision to pre-empt the report's publication, at 1 pm last Monday, by staging a press conference about it at 12 noon on that day. The CAA acted in total contempt of Parliament last Monday; it also gave further offence to the bereaved and injured, many of whom heard the CAA's self-justifying comments in broadcasts before seeing the report.

I am sure that the Minister for Roads and Traffic, who is to reply to this debate, will know that the report did not reach hon. Members until after the CAA's press conference and that he will understand the resentment that has been caused.

As the right hon. Member in whose constituency the accident occurred, I did not receive the report until 2.30 pm last Monday. It came with a note from Lord Brabazon, the Minister for Civil Aviation, informing me that its publication was timed for 1 pm and that the report was strictly embargoed until then. Yet I had been approached before 1 pm by journalists who already had the report and the CAA's comments.

The CAA's tactics are now seen as a shabby exercise in news management which made worse the Secretary of State's decision to publish the report on 13 March, the day before the Budget, when the media's attention was certain to be heavily concentrated on the Chancellor's options the following day. Many people feel that the choice of publication date was a calculated attempt to bury the report—a document of very considerable importance for the travelling public—with grossly indecent haste.

This debate is about making sure that the report is not buried and that, in keeping with the campaign mounted by those who were bereaved and injured in the Manchester accident, its lessons are fully learned and quickly acted upon.

In an important and moving letter from William Beckett, the co-chairman of the campaign, whose 18-year-old daughter died in the accident, he told me of their total lack of confidence in the CAA and of their determination to ensure that the report is used to secure radical and wide-ranging improvements in passenger safety.

In the Secretary of State's recent letter to me, before publication, he wrote in high praise of the report; but ultimately any such document can only be as good as those charged with the task of giving its recommendations effect. By that test, the prospects for the report of the Manchester accident are not at all good.

The CAA, with its responsibility for aviation safety, claimed at its press conference last Monday to have moved quickly to improve safety standards since the Manchester accident. Yet Tony Parry, Greater Manchester's chief fire officer, whom I hold in high regard, says that if the same accident had happened today the same number of people would have died. That is biting criticism of the self-congratulatory news release put out by the CAA last Monday, and from a very senior and respected fire officer.

For their part, the survivors and relatives of those who died in the accident have reacted even more sharply. They said, after publication of the report, that they will take legal action against the CAA unless it instigates safety regulations urged by the Department of Transport within six months. Moreover, they feel strongly that the Secretary of State must now himself offer some leadership if improvements in passenger safety are to be secured, and they want to hear an assurance in this debate that he accepts his responsibilities.

Urgency is now demanded for compulsory replacement rather than repair of cracked combustor cans, for removal of passenger seats blocking emergency exits, for action on the report's recommendations about water sprinkler systems, for the mandatory introduction of smoke hoods and, among other safety measures, for widening the aisle between the two forward galleys/bulkheads. The Secretary of State must have a view on these important matters and he has a duty to the travelling public to make it known in this debate.

In regard to smoke hoods and water sprinkler systems, the right hon. Gentleman will know of the important recent announcement made by British Airways. I welcome its important initiative in supporting work on a cabin sprinkler system and in calling for tenders for the supply of smoke hoods to its passengers. In this regard, I ask the Minister to comment tonight on the fact that, although the Civil Aviation Authority was kept abreast of the progress of the AAIB's findings in investigating the Manchester accident, it was more than two and a half years after the accident before a specification for passenger smoke hoods was issued. Many people find such dilatoriness on so crucial an issue beyond comprehension when there is clear evidence that 45 of the 55 lives that were lost in the accident could have been saved by the use of smoke hoods.

Smoke hoods are already provided for crew members and there is now the possibility that, with an in-flight fire, an aircraft could land with the crew alive and the passengers dead. I am told—the Minister will perhaps be able to confirm—that members of the CAA and of the AAIB routinely carry smoke hoods themselves. In any case, if there were to be a further accident in which it could be shown that passengers had died as a result of the inhalation of toxic fumes, the CAA could be legally liable for breach of statutory duty, namely, failing to fulfil the general objectives set out in section 4(1)(b) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982. It is not, however, action after another tragic happening that any of us wants to see, but the prevention of further tragedies by applying the lessons already learned at such very high cost in human life.

There is, of course, an overriding need to vouchsafe rapid evacuation from an aircraft that is on fire but, as the report shows, other important requirements must be met if lives are not to be lost preventably. While it should be possible to equip new aircraft with sprinkler systems for fire suppression, I understand that there would be very real difficulties in requiring operators to retrofit such systems. Their provision is thus a longer-term aim and, even when it has been secured, smoke hoods will still he required as part of a "twin strategy". To make them available is an urgent necessity, as is limitation of the number of seats, improving egress from aircraft and a strict insistence on elevating passenger safety above profit in our approach to all the problems and prescriptions dealt with in the AAIB's report.

The Minister will know that many news editors, much to their credit, were more than a match for the news managers when the AAIB's report finally saw the light of day last Monday in that they gave very wide coverage to the reaction of Greater Manchester's chief fire officer and to the views of the bereaved families and survivors of the accident, among other critics of the CAA's serene self-satisfaction. The AAIB's in-depth study of survivability was given due praise but the Minister will know that many parts of the media are strongly critical of the delay until more than three and a half years after the accident in publishing the report. I questioned the Secretary of State about the delay on 10 January—as reported in Hansard, column 691—and he replied with an expression of "considerable sympathy" for my criticism. I hope we shall hear more tonight about why it took so long to publish the report.

There are some who seem to know more about this than has been reported to this House. Listen, for example, to The Times leader of 14 March: The exceptional delay in bringing out the report is not explained entirely by the comprehensiveness of the investigation that ensued. It resulted also from objections to an earlier draft of the report by some of the interested parties in the United States. There is cause for concern here. We need to know, before this debate concludes, how the Secretary of State responds to that concern.

The Times leader went on to say that such exceptional delay, even if not deliberate prevarication, may have put at a disadvantage some of those who were negotiating for compensation, and it proceeded: The findings of such inquiries should be in the public domain as early as possible, for obvious reasons, and it may be that the remedy is to make sure they have the necessary legal privilege. Let there be a second report registering objections and conceding or answering them; the public interest is not served by the sort of time-lag that has occurred in this case.

Again, the Manchester Evening News, in a strongly worded leader on the same day, entitled "Far too little, far too late", argued for much more openness in investigating aviation accidents: We remain convinced there should have been a full public inquiry into the runway fire. The Clapham rail disaster in December claimed 20 fewer lives yet a public inquiry was immediately promised with a pledge that it would publish its findings rapidly. Why should that be?

The Secretary of State must accept that there is very widespread concern about the issues raised by the Manchester accident and the way in which they have been dealt with since August 1985. I make no apologies for having referred so frequently tonight to the reactions of the bereaved families and those who were injured in the accident. They have a prescriptive right to be heard by the House—I am sending the Secretary of State a full statement of their recommendations on the way forward—and it is quite shocking that they were still awaiting copies of the AAIB's report while the CAA was holding its press conference in the Connaught rooms last Monday. They feel bitter, as John Beardmore, a survivor who was in intensive care after the accident, made clear last Monday afternoon. Talking of the CAA, he said: They let us down once by certificating that aircraft as safe when it was a death trap. Now they have let us down again by not taking enough action to improve safety in the most important matters—smokehoods and exits.

That is the authentic voice of those who have taken the closest interest in developments since the Manchester accident happened. They have strong public backing for their demand for higher standards of aviation safety. To give just one example, of which I was reminded today by Dr. James Vant, who has done so much to advance the cause of passenger safety, 18,081, or 97 per cent., of 18,666 people questioned in a recent attitude survey said it should be mandatory for airlines to provide smokehoods for passengers.

The accident at Manchester airport was an unusual one, but its lessons are widely applicable. If they are fully heeded, more lives will be saved and fewer people will be scarred by preventable injury. We must never again allow passengers to die on board a stationary aircraft after an engine fire on take-off as they did in Manchester on 22 August 1985.

10.18 pm
The Minister for Roads and Traffic (Mr. Peter Bottomley)

The whole House wants transport safety to be maintained and improved. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) has made the point that the Manchester accident was an unusual accident followed by an unusual number of deaths. He will accept that, if much can be learned from the investigation following that tragic accident, people who fly throughout the world will benefit.

I reject completely any suggestion which people may infer from what the right hon. Gentleman said that either the air accidents investigation branch of the Department of Transport or the Civil Aviation Authority had turned their back on things that were obvious. I can illustrate that point by saying that if other countries had smoke hoods that would meet people's needs and could be put on easily and without delay when getting out of an aeroplane, they would be more common elsewhere. We ought to learn from the expert investigation and see how far forward we can go on the 31 recommendations.

Although the Civil Aviation Authority can speak for itself, I must reject some of the chronology to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. I do not question his motives or his sincerity. He has demonstrated in the House and outside a very keen interest in achieving the maximum possible aviation safety. Both I and the Secretary of State for Transport join him in that aim. He says that inquiries should be in public. I believe that it is far more important that the public should have the assurance that experts have done the investigation, and that the report should be published. I do not believe that strong accusations should be made in public as the experts go through the investigation. The primary cause of the Manchester air disaster was quickly identified.

The right hon. Gentleman has asked me what was the Civil Aviation Authority's response to recommendation 4.8: direct fusion weld repair of circumferential cracks in the JT8D engines combustor cans should be deleted from all approved engine overhaul manuals. The CAA has accepted that recommendation and has issued an airworthiness directive. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that the CAA has responded to the recommendations.

The CAA press conference, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, began with a review of fire research, specifically without direct reference to the report. Reference to the report was made only after the publication time. I hope that those listening to this debate will recognise and accept that.

The publication date was the earliest possible, as determined by the chief inspector. It might be inferred from the right hon. Gentleman's remarks that the Department of Transport was trying to smother publication of the report or that there was prevarication. The Times leader applied that description to me on a different day. I reject it for myself, as well as for the Department, over this report. Prevarication, at its gentlest, means "to walk unsteadily", which is an accusation that I hope no one would make of me, certainly during Lent. It can also mean to "deliberately try to mislead".

In matters of aviation safety, as in other aspects of transport safety on the road and at sea, the Department of Transport has no interest and no record of misleading people. We have a greater interest in enhancing and maintaining safety than any other group of people in this country. The Secretary of State and I and our colleagues, as well as our predecessors and successors at the Department, carry the burden of attending incidents such as the M1 crash at Kegworth, and we watch the emergency services at work. We were the people who were called to the King's Cross tube disaster. I mention just two incidents that I have attended and leave aside the representative samples of the 5,000 deaths on the road each year. Any suggestion that we do not care or that we shall not do everything that we can to improve safety is wrong.

I shall not take up other remarks made by the right hon. Gentleman about quotations from others, as I suspect that those remarks were made before the CAA stated its position on the recommendations in the air accident investigation branch's report.

Towards the end of his remarks, the right hon. Gentleman asked why people whose reputations may be affected must be provided with an opportunity to comment in the report. A legal requirement to do that applies to each of the AAIB reports. I refer the right hon. Gentleman and the House to regulation 1I of the Air Accidents Investigation Regulations 1983.

The comments of those whose reputations may be affected might affect the reports conclusions. It is perfectly reasonable that people should be given the opportunity to make their comments known. I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the report, which is more than 200 pages long. Producing it has taken months, which is reasonable, because world-wide attention will be focused on it, and it deals with issues that the right hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned. I hope that this opportunity to reply to the right hon. Gentleman will correct some of the impressions that have surrounded the accident and subsequent investigation.

The right hon. Gentleman reminded us that 55 human beings died in an accident that should have been completely survivable. I think that that is the main point that he advanced. The report states that many factors came together to produce this tragic result. It made 106 findings and 31 recommendations. The complexity of the interrelated causes of the fatalities and the thoroughness with which the accident has been investigated are self-evident reasons why the report has taken so long to produce. Recent accident reports have appeared, on average, 15 months after the accident. This one is exceptional in every way. It is a landmark report in the investigation of aircraft fires. The House will want to join me in paying tribute to the investigators.

The delay in publication has had no effect whatever on the timing of recommendations and subsequent action. The inspector makes recommendations to the appropriate organisation as soon as he has concluded that such a recommendation is warranted. The CAA, which has the statutory responsibilility for the safety regulation of civil aviation, took note of the recommendations addressed to it and acted on them immediately. Immediate action leads to results in the future.

The CAA was aware of previous research on smoke hoods, which did not entirely accord with the view in the report. Some of the comments made on the day of the release of the report suggested that some people who were quoted as experts held views and were contributing to the debate. Research, in concert with the United States, France and Canada, was carried out and a specification developed which was presented to other people for comment. The final specification was agreed. It might be worth while the right hon. Gentleman acknowledging that that was a good action to take with others who have a keen professional interest and knowledge. I understand that three types of smoke hoods have recently been presented to the CAA for possible approval. All this takes time.

Some people say that the CAA specification is too demanding. As a frequent airline passenger, I agree with the CAA. I am offering a view not as an expert but as someone who realises that, if all the miles travelled on road were travelled in the air, instead of 5,000 there would be 650 deaths. The CAA believes that the donning of, and possible false sense of security given by, smoke hoods may delay evacuation. It would be quite wrong, because it could increase fatalities, to provide the worst of both worlds by delaying evacuation as a result of a less than adequate smoke hood.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned sprinkler systems, which promise a great leap forward. The best distribution system must be determined for in-service aircraft, not just for scrap cabins used for fire drills. The question needs to be raised whether the system could go off inadvertently in flight. If it did, what would be the effect on the aircraft's electrical and electronic systems? We do not yet know the answer to these questions and the work takes time.

The need for such consultation, research or development applies to 24 of the 31 recommendations in the report. The remaining seven resulted in definitive action soon after being made.

Fires in aircraft are not new. The AAIB report on the Boeing 707 training accident on 17 March 1977 included a recommendation that further research should be urgently undertaken into the prevention and control of aircraft interior fires. Work was carried out and, indeed, was being carried out prior even to that accident. Much of the effort went into preventing fires occurring in the first place, such as the anti-misting kerosene research.

Until the Manchester accident, the main thrust of the research was directed to preventing cabin materials from cathcing fire. In fact, on 20 May 1985, three months before the Manchester tragedy, the CAA issued a directive requiring improved fire-resistant materials for aircraft seats. Since the accident, the industry now appreciates that the gases and fumes produced when these materials ignite is just as important as, if not more important than, their initial ignition.

I have dealt with those few items in some detail rather than trying to cover, necessarily superficially in the time available, all the recommendations. The ones that I have chosen are, together with the apparent delay in publication, those that seem to be of most public interest and have on occasion been the subject of the least-informed comment.

It has to be remembered that fire casualties form a small proportion of aircraft accident casualties. Effort must be allocated according to the degree of risk to passengers. For example, from the investigation of the Kegworth crash we may discover different needs. I refer not just to the primary cause but also to the secondary events, which, as so tragically at Manchester, can lead to the loss of life.

No one would suggest that the regulatory authorities or, indeed, the accident investigators have a monopoly of expertise in aircraft safety. In comments on this accident, we have seen too many specialists extrapolating expertise to wider areas where different circumstances apply. The best way of preventing such accidents in the future—which is what the right hon. Gentleman and I are dedicated to—is informed debate and consultation worldwide. Short cuts to conclusions, which we have seen outside this House, can only serve to deflect the effort of those concerned away from their primary task of making air travel even safer.

I am sure that the whole House is grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising this subject. There may have been one or two minor points of disagreement between us, but the general concern to make aviation travel—airports and planes—safe is one that we all share.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.