Chinook ZD576: Select Committee Report

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 10:50 pm on 5 November 2002.

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Photo of Baroness Warnock Baroness Warnock Crossbench 10:50, 5 November 2002

My Lords, I feel ashamed of having added my name to the long list of speakers tonight and of following the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, whose expertise would put anybody to shame. However, I should like to make two points. First, I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, that this was probably a bad occasion on which to set up a Select Committee of your Lordships' House. I yield to no one in my admiration for Select Committees. They work hard and dispassionately, they take evidence and, in my experience, they never go beyond what the evidence allows in drawing their conclusions. However, this was a difficult case because, as the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, has already said, the committee amounted to a court of law, finding people guilty or deciding that there was not sufficient evidence to deem them guilty.

Nevertheless, the Select Committee obviously worked hard. Like others who have spoken this evening, I read the report with enormous attention and interest. It is extraordinary and regrettable that your Lordships' House should find it necessary to refuse to accept the conclusions of the Select Committee, ill-advised though it may have been to set it up in the first place.

My second point goes back to the standard of proof required before the finding of negligence could be established. That is starting point of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. Those noble Lords who wish to assert the propriety of the finding of negligence have not explained how that extremely strict standard of proof can be set aside. As we have heard many times, the standard is that there should be absolutely no doubt whatsoever about the verdict. There is no doubt in my mind that some of your Lordships who are confident of the propriety of the verdict of gross negligence have recounted the story of what happened as a narrative, telling us what the pilots did and where they went wrong and asserting that they were rash, that they did not take the weather into account and that they were flying too fast and too low. Like many narratives, it is delivered with great conviction. The people who have told it have frequently said that it is the only realistic or credible explanation. That is the power of the good story teller, who proceeds on the assumption that they know how it must have been and then we all believe it.

As regards the standard of proof and there being no doubt whatsoever of the propriety of the verdict, one must begin to doubt—as, indeed, people, including the unanimous body of the Select Committee, did doubt—that that standard had been reached. One may argue that it is an impossibly high standard and that there can be no past events for which it is proper to say that there can be no doubt whatsoever as regards what happened. Nevertheless, those are the relevant words.

I refer to the doubts, which I certainly do experience, for example, as regards the aircraft remaining under control right up until the end, as has been assumed in the stories that we have been told; that is, that the pilots did something wrong. But what if there had been a fault? It has to be remembered that the helicopter was virtually destroyed by fire. If there had been a computer fault, for example, there could have been no evidence left to find. Everyone agrees that the evidence was extremely thin. That fact alone seems to me to justify experiencing doubt. If doubt is experienced, according to the standard set there should have been no assignment of blame and no establishment of gross negligence on the part of the pilots. The evidence gained from simulation is not real evidence. The evidence left on the ground was negligible. I cannot see how doubt can possibly be precluded. Therefore, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, brought his amendment forward.