§ 83. Mr. Rawlinsonasked the Attorney General whether he has now considered the evidence provided to him in support of the allegation that Mr. Frederick Beezley was responsible for a deliberate delay in the investigation after the aircraft accident at Southall on the 2nd September, 1958, of alleged infringements of the Air Safety Regulations by Independent Air Travel Limited.
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The Attorney GeneralI have received no such evidence. The hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter), after being asked for the evidence upon which he based his allegation against Mr. Beezley, sent me the following material: a copy of a confidential police report; an extract from the direction given to the jury at an inquest by the Deputy Coroner for West Middlesex, in which he expressed his view that the evidence at the inquest disclosed breaches of the Air Navigation Order and Regulations; and a reference to the OFFICIAL REPORT for 14th July, 1959, when the then Solicitor General told the House (a) that no'evidence justifying proceedings for such breaches had been submitted to me within the statutory time limit and (b) that the time for instituting them had then expired. The police report was included among the documents on which Treasury Counsel advised, within the statutory time limit, that the evidence would not justify the institution of proceedings. The views of the Deputy Coroner for West Middlesex, and the Answers given by the then Solicitor General in the House, appear to me to have no bearing on the allegation that Mr. Beezley delayed the investigations. As I told the House on 5th June last, the investigations were in fact completed in time to permit the institution of criminal proceedings if that course had been thought necessary or desirable in the public interest; and Mr. Beezley was not concerned in them at any stage.