Defence
Defence
Angus Robertson (Moray, Scottish National Party)
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will place in the Library a copy of his Department's brief for the Assistant Director of Information dated October 1998 D/DAO/14/3/5.
Liam Fox (North Somerset, Conservative)
I will write to the hon. Member.
Substantive answer from Philip Hammond to Angus Robertson:
My predecessor undertook to write to you in answer to your parliamentary question answered on
Officials have carried out an extensive search for the document you requested, totalling around 125 man-hours. This far exceeds the Parliamentary guidelines on cost limits for complying with Parliamentary Questions.
As you are aware the requested document was referenced in the Haddon-Cave inquiry report and was provided to the Inquiry in 2008. The Haddon-Cave Inquiry was, with the XV230 Board of Inquiry and Coroner’s Inquest, the third major review of Nimrod Safety. MOD officials supported the Haddon-Cave Inquiry for over one year, collating and submitting documents from a large number of sources and archive sites. All safety lessons that could be identified from the documents were recorded. As you know the Department accepted responsibility for the loss of XV230 and again recorded safety critical observations and recommendations from these reviews. However, the individual documents were returned to their archive sites.
The Nimrod is now out of service and the dedicated teams of Nimrod staffs have been dispersed. Safety critical lessons from the Nimrod review which have relevance for our in-service aircraft fleets have been fully captured and are available to Departmental personnel in safety related posts. However, to relocate the individual documents from archive that supported those lessons would place a significant additional burden on departmental staff.
Consequently, while I realise this will come as a disappointment to you, the requested document could only be provided at disproportionate cost.