With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the foot and mouth disease inquiries.

Following last week's publication by the Royal Society of its independent examination of how we might prevent and combat future animal disease epidemics in the United Kingdom—chaired by Sir Brian Follett—today we publish the independent report of Dr. lain Anderson, in which he identifies the lessons he believes can be learned from the most recent of those: last year's outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The Government are grateful to Dr. Anderson for the huge amount of work and effort that he has put in and to all the 800 to 900 individuals and organisations who gave him evidence.

Foot and mouth disease is a devastating and highly infectious animal disease, which is feared and loathed across the world because of its impact and virulence. In Britain alone, the experiences of the 1967 outbreak are a remembered nightmare in many rural communities, but what hit us in February 2001 was, as Dr. Anderson notes, due to a

"rare set of circumstances ⌦ one of the worst epidemics of FMD the modem world has ever seen. Numbers alone cannot capture the sense of what unfolded. The great epidemic of 2001 left an indelible mark on communities, businesses and people from all walks of life."

The Government are determined to learn the lessons of what happened in 2001. That is why we so quickly set up an inquiry process with three strands—each of them independent. That decision means that within six months of the United Kingdom regaining disease-free status, we already have the scientific review, the policy commission report charting the way forward for the industry and, now, the report of lessons that we need to learn.

Dr. Anderson's report, which concentrates primarily on the early part of the outbreak, is a sombre and thoughtful document—measured in its tone and content, though unquestionably grave in its import. What is crucial to future policy is that he makes a large number of strong recommendations, most, if not all, of which I believe we will be able to accept. Indeed, many of them suggest actions that the Government—while trying not to prejudge his report—have begun to address.

Separately, in his comments and observations, Dr. Anderson draws on the views and evidence put before him, about which there is certainly scope for different interpretation, even for disagreement. However, he asks in his introduction whether, as a first step, DEFRA can

"simply ⌦ admit that Government made mistakes during its handling of the crisis and that all involved are determined to learn from these mistakes"—

I can and I do. The House will know that I have always acknowledged that, in the desperate circumstances faced not only by the farming community, but by my Department and its officials, as well as by our departmental and ministerial predecessors, mistakes were bound to have been made.

Dr. Anderson shows complete understanding and sympathy for the terrible experiences of those in the field, but he also shows recognition of the dilemma of the centre, especially where there were clear or substantial deficiencies in management information. He suggests that, for the first few weeks, the Government did not realise the seriousness of the measures that would be needed to control the outbreak. I accept—though it is with hindsight—that that is so, but he also shows how often the action taken was entirely consistent with the information and advice then available. But if we are to learn the lessons from those dreadful months, what we need most to consider is whether—while, as I say, there are bound to have been mistakes—there were structural defects.

Dr. Anderson does identify what he regards as mistakes of strategy. I think that it is right to say that many, if not all of those, the Government already acknowledge. Where there may be room for disagreement is, again, on how much of that was evident only, or at least primarily, with hindsight. On the issue of an immediate national ban on animal movements, Dr. Anderson himself says in the report:

"Even today the SVS"—

the state veterinary service—

"believes it would not have had the justification or the support immediately to introduce widespread restrictions".

Throughout the report the reader returns again and again to what was known and to what was without precedent and consequently unanticipated. For example, the report says:

"The disease could have been present at Burnside Farm for weeks, but it went unreported, despite the requirement of farmers to report suspected cases of notifiable diseases."

We now know, in fact, that there was virus present on at least 57 farms in 16 counties on the day the first case was confirmed, 20 February.

As to the unknown origin of the first case, both inquiries stress the importance of effective import controls to prevent exotic infectious diseases from entering the country. We have set in hand a wide-ranging programme of action against the risks posed by what must have been illegal imports of meat and animal products, but as both reports acknowledge, it will never be possible to reduce that risk to zero. So the necessary measures must be in place to limit the risk that, if disease enters the country, it will reach livestock and subsequently spread.

Both reports also highlight the importance of contingency planning. Dr. Anderson examines the pre-existing contingency plan, which was followed, but demonstrates that, though it met the international standards then expected—the European Commission judged the UK's readiness for disease outbreak as among the best in Europe—we can see, with hindsight, its deficiencies. But that is an admission that I make with hindsight. The European Commission is on record as having said recently:

"It cannot be reasonably expected from any Member State to design a contingency plan for the event of an epidemic causing more outbreaks within months than the 10 year's estimate for the whole Community".

On all those issues the analysis in the report is detailed. It shows that, in Dr. Anderson's own words—words echoed, among others, by Commissioner Byrne—the outbreak in Britain in 2001 was of a kind unanticipated in any country in the world.

Dr. Anderson makes some trenchant criticisms to which I shall return, but he also deals comprehensively with the myriad conspiracy theories in circulation then and since. He does not just dismiss them; he investigates and dispels them. One in particular, the charge that the handling of the crisis was driven by concern over the timing of the election, lie explicitly rejects, saying:

"We have explicitly examined Government papers arid questioned Ministers and officials, but have found no evidence to support such a suggestion."

While awaiting the reports, we have already published a draft interim contingency plan and invited stakeholders and operational partners to comment. We will now review it comprehensively in the light of the inquiries' recommendations for regular updating, involvement of stakeholders and rehearsals, all of which the Government accept.

Dr. Anderson calls for a mechanism to assess potential domestic civil threats and for steps to improve our capacity to handle an emergency of national proportions. We have set up the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, reporting to a Cabinet Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, which is intended to do just that through horizon scanning, an assessment capability and work with Departments facing disruptive challenges on how to prevent or manage crises. Dr. Anderson also identifies the need to establish "trigger points", where issues move to a new phase of crisis handling. Again, we agree.

Both reports make important recommendations about how the Government should improve their ability to respond effectively in the event of a disease outbreak. Again, I can say that we support the thrust of those recommendations, especially where they relate to the need for high-quality management information systems.

The Army is praised, rightly, for the role it played in helping to deal with the enormous logistical challenge—one that it has identified as being of larger dimensions logistically than the Gulf war. The Army did indeed do a remarkable job. I believe that had we had better information systems in place, it would have been called into action earlier—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"]—but, as Dr. Anderson demonstrates, not in the context, as so often claimed, of the Northumberland report, but when at a much later stage disposal options were failing to keep pace with slaughter.

In addition, knowing what we now know, we would on any future occasion work on the presumption that a national ban on livestock movements would apply when the first FMD case was confirmed. However, because of the early, silent spread of disease in last year's outbreak, it is important not to assume that it would ever have been easy to check. Dr. Anderson himself says that

"even a perfectly implemented cull of infected premises within 24 hours of discovery would not, on its own, have controlled that epidemic until the disease itself had reduced the density of susceptible farms to such an extent that the epidemic ended naturally."

We do not intend, in the future, to permit local authorities to impose a widespread closure of footpaths. That, too, is a judgment made with the benefit of hindsight, and the House will know that it is a contested judgment. Some local authorities clung to a blanket ban long after the Government had encouraged its lifting.

Both inquiries have called for a strategic approach to animal health and disease control policies, and endorsed the call in the report of the Policy Commission on Food and Farming, chaired by Sir Don Curry, for a comprehensive animal health strategy. My Department will in the near future open discussions with industry and other interests on the content and coverage of such a strategy. It would need to deal with the protection of public health, animal disease prevention and control, surveillance, animal identification, animal welfare and emergency preparedness.

Another key issue that has drawn much comment is the contentious issue of vaccination, on which both inquiries made recommendations. We can immediately accept two specific recommendations: that, as in 2001, we should ensure that the option of vaccination forms part of any future strategy for the control of FMD; and that any emergency vaccination policy should in future be not "vaccinate to kill" but, ideally, "vaccinate to live". That, however, does not require action from the Government alone; it requires acceptance of meat and meat products from vaccinated animals entering the food chain normally.

The inquiry reports rightly address most of their recommendations to the Government, but they both also recognise that the farming industry shares responsibility for minimising disease risks. Dr. Anderson concludes that the Government can do only so much to prevent a recurrence of disease; the farming industry has a crucial role to play, particularly with regard to biosecurity.

That reminder is particularly pertinent after last month's FMD scare in the midlands. It is not enough for any Government to have the right approach or proper rules to mitigate disease risk; everybody in the industry must follow those rules and they must be properly enforced. In that recent episode, existing pig identification rules were not followed. Had the tests confirmed disease, the effort to track down the source of the infection would have been severely hampered. The episode strengthens our resolve to continue to work with the livestock industry to establish better livestock identification.

Both this episode and the report lend weight to the call by Sir Don Curry's commission for farm assurance schemes, owned and operated by the industry itself, rewarding good farm management practice in biosecurity and other areas. The Government endorse that principle, too.

However, although we shall give full consideration to all the lessons in the reports, there are two areas where we can and will move forward more quickly. The emphasis in the reports on the roles that might be played by emergency vaccination and by pre-emptive culling underlines the importance of the passage of the Animal Health Bill, which my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be taking to a delayed Committee stage next week. The Bill contains powers that could be vital to the timely interventions for which the inquiries call.

Secondly, the Government need to take an early decision on the animal movement rules to apply from the late summer and, in particular, on the 20-day standstill. We shall consult quickly with industry stakeholders in the next week or two, in the light of what the two reports say, on interim rules to apply from late August.

Dr. Anderson's is a serious report into an outbreak of foot and mouth disease that was devastating for many parts of our country. I want once more to quote Dr. Anderson:

"Even had everything been done perfectly by all those concerned to tackle the disease, the country would have had a major epidemic with massive consequences ⌦ many farmers, local people and government officials made heroic efforts to fight the disease and limit its effects. Through their efforts it was finally overcome and eradicated after 221 days, one day less than the epidemic of 1967–68."

The inquiry report makes many criticisms and addresses many concerns. It accepts, however, that all those involved did their level best to deal with a crisis of unprecedented importance. It makes criticisms that are accepted. It makes recommendations on which we will act. Above all, it fulfils its remit—it gives us the basis on which to learn lessons, and learn lessons we will.

First, may I thank the Secretary of State for giving me access to the Anderson Committee's report this morning and for the 30-minute sight of her statement?

Members on both sides of the House will agree that at this time we need to have in our thoughts and sympathies those thousands of people whose livelihoods were either threatened or completely ruined by the devastating outbreak of foot and mouth disease last year. Although the report makes some trenchant criticisms of the Government, to which I shall allude in a little while, it is also right for the Opposition to make clear our appreciation of the work done by those many officials and veterinary surgeons, both in the right hon. Lady's Department and outside, working in the field and in London, who gave their all, often under impossible pressures and with inadequate support, to try to bring this dreadful epidemic under control.

The right hon. Lady drew attention to a number of the recommendations for the future in both the Anderson report and the Royal Society's report. We welcome the fact that she, like us, has been persuaded by the Royal Society's report of the need to incorporate emergency vaccination as part of a future strategy for containing further outbreaks of the disease.

Although I welcome, too, the Secretary of State's emphasis on the need to strengthen controls of illegal meat imports, can she confirm that 10 months after the end of the epidemic and three months after the publication of her Department's action plan, there have been only three spot checks on aircraft at our ports and that her Department is still wrangling with Customs and Excise over who exactly is in charge of those import controls? Is not it a disgrace that the Department should show such a lack of urgency in the wake of the devastation last year?

I hope that the Government will, as early as possible in the autumn, make time for a full parliamentary debate on the reports and that they will also make time for parliamentary scrutiny and debate of the contingency plan that they are drafting—as recommended in the Royal Society and Anderson reports. Will the Secretary of State use her best offices with her colleagues to ensure that those opportunities for parliamentary scrutiny are given to us?

The report amounts to a shocking catalogue of incompetence and confusion. Although the Secretary of State sprinkled her statement with the word "hindsight", is it not clear from any reading of Dr. Anderson's report today that many grievous mistakes were made, which ought to have been avoided on the basis of the evidence that the Government had available to them at that time?

Is it not the case that Dr. Anderson concluded about contingency planning that, although contingency plans were in place,

"maintaining and updating these plans was not a priority at national level."?

Why was it not a priority? Why did the Government ignore the Drummond report of 1999, which identified serious shortcomings in their contingency plans? Why were the concerns expressed by the chief veterinary officer in 2000 about the inadequacies in contingency planning never followed up?

Why did the Government ignore the warnings of the European Union's foot and mouth disease conference committee and of their own scientists in 2000 that a virulent new strain of the virus was spreading through Asia, the middle east and into Europe? Why was no effective action taken in the wake of the outbreaks of classical swine fever in the Netherlands in 1997 and in this country in 2000?

Will the Secretary of State explain why there should be such a contrast between the inaction shown on this side of the channel and the reaction of the Dutch Government, who reviewed their contingency plans in the wake of classical swine fever, tested their contingency plan, agreed it with stakeholders and had it approved by that country's Parliament?

Why were Ministers, right up until and even during the proceedings of the Anderson inquiry, refusing to admit to the failure of their contingency planning? Has the Secretary of State seen the passage in the Anderson report where Dr. Anderson states that Government Ministers told the inquiry that

"comprehensive contingency plans were in place.? We did not find this to be so."?

Does the right hon. Lady agree—even with hindsight—with Dr. Anderson's conclusion that the Government's plans were

"limited in scope, out of date ⌦ and not integrated into a national programme of rehearsal and testing"?

The right hon. Lady spoke of hindsight, too, in her discussion of the reasons why the Government did not at an earlier date, during the critical first three days, impose a ban on livestock movements. Can she explain why the Dutch Government acted with greater alacrity than ours, and imposed a ban two days earlier than she and her colleagues chose to do? Can she confirm that Dr. Anderson's conclusion about the importance of hindsight in that decision was somewhat at odds with her own, as just given in her statement? Dr. Anderson stated:

"Considering what is known about the infectious nature of this disease, we conclude that earlier movement restrictions would have been justified, and should have been ready to be put in place more quickly than they were."

The Secretary of State spoke about how her Department's response was handicapped by serious failures in management information, but might it not be considered, at least to some degree, the responsibility of Ministers to ensure that management information and systems were adequate? Does she agree with Dr. Anderson's conclusion on page 6 of his report that

"no one in command understood in sufficient detail what was happening on the ground"

and that, for the first two months of the outbreak, there was a

"serious deficiency in the reliability and completeness of the information available to those in charge of the disease"?

Why should that be so when we know, not least from the public sessions of the Anderson inquiry, that again and again farmers and others living at the sharp end of the epidemic were shouting from the rooftops about the failure of the Government's systems on slaughter and the disposal of livestock?

Does the right hon. Lady agree that knowledge of the Government's failures to implement their declared policies effectively was a key factor in undermining public confidence in the Government's policy to stamp out the disease? How much confidence can we now have that she and her colleagues can put things right when the Select Committee reported only last week that her Department had no strategy on information technology and that key financial data are either omitted from its annual report or given in an inaccurate form?

The present Administration make much of their philosophy of joined-up government. Does not that slogan seem somewhat ironic when contrasted with Dr. Anderson's description? He said:

"A sense of panic appeared, communications became erratic and orderly processes started to break down. Decision making became haphazard and messy".

The situation was serious enough, even early on, for a ban on all livestock movements to be introduced and for the countryside to be closed down, so why did it take Ministers 31 days before activating the Cabinet Office Briefing Room system, or COBR, to co-ordinate Government actions—31 days during which, in Dr. Anderson's words,

"a serious veterinary problem became a national disaster"

and there was an

"apparent vacuum in central advice and expertise on crisis management"?

Why, even after COBR was set up, was strategic decision taking involving the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture taking place outside COBR?

Does not all that add weight to the widespread suspicion that the Government were allowing concerns about the election date and their election plans to take precedence over effective measures to control and stamp out the disease? Nowhere was that more obvious than in the Government's delay in calling in the Army. It was hardly as if there was a shortage of people asking for that course of action. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) called for that action, their proposal was rubbished by the same Ministers who say that, with hindsight, they ought to have called in the Army earlier. Does the Secretary of State endorse the comments of her permanent secretary to the Public Accounts Committee on 3 July that the delay in calling in the Army was due to difficult), in getting approval from senior Ministers? Does not that verdict from her most senior civil servant suggest once again that we are right to say that concerns about presentation and electoral prospects counted for most with Ministers?

The Government's response to the epidemic is best summed up in a statement given not by the right hon. Lady but by the Prime Minister himself to Dr. Anderson on 22 January this year. When asked about the failures of Government policy, the Prime Minister responded:

"The Government had no reason to think about Foot and Mouth Disease before it broke out".

Does not that single sentence encapsulate the special blend of negligence, incompetence and complacency that has characterised the Government's handling of foot and mouth disease? It is not just farmers but the entire rural economy and all taxpayers who have paid a heavy price for that neglect and incompetence. Does the Secretary of State agree that it will take more than promises? It will take action and results to restore the trust of people in the countryside in Ministers, a trust that has been wholly destroyed by the grievous failure of her policies and those of her colleagues.

The hon. Gentleman asked me so many questions that I am not entirely sure that I can reply to every single one—[Interruption.] Let us not get into a master class on how to be in opposition. He asked me first about the issue of spot checks. I do not recall his precise wording, but I think that he was referring to personal imports and checks at airports. I am not sure that his figures were correct, but even if they were, they were not, if I may say so, particularly relevant.

The hon. Gentleman will find when he has a chance to study the report at more length—I fully appreciate that neither he nor other hon. Members will have had the opportunity to do so—that Dr. Anderson makes plain that it is widely believed that, in so far as an illegal import might have been the source of the original material that caused the disease to enter this country, that is most unlikely because of the chance of its coming into contact with animals. The source is much more likely to have been some commercial import. Of course, very thorough and very many more checks are carried out on commercial imports—[Interruption.] It is no good Opposition Members squawking about what they think; I suggest that they look at the report. Dr. Anderson makes it very plain that there are thorough checks, and details the nature of those checks and what they uncover.

Secondly, it is total nonsense to talk about us wrangling with Customs and Excise. We are in fact in close communication with the range of other officials who have the responsibilities in the field. We are awaiting the outcome of the risk assessment on the handling of imports, and we anticipate that when it comes in it will give us some recommendations on how we can even more improve our contacts.

The hon. Gentleman then talked about reviewing the contingency plans. He quoted rather selectively—inevitably, I suppose. He said, quite correctly, that Dr. Anderson stated that he and his team did not find comprehensive contingency plans in place. However, Dr. Anderson went on to point out that the contingency plans that were in place

"had been prepared and accepted by the European Commission and approved by the Standing Veterinary Committee."

Opposition Members have frequently alleged that there were no contingency plans. That is nonsense; there were contingency plans. They were not adequate to deal with the outbreak that hit us, but then nobody thought that they would have been.

The hon. Gentleman talked about why concerns expressed by the chief veterinary officer were not followed up. If the hon. Gentleman has been following that issue in the report, he must know that those concerns were shared internally in the veterinary service but not communicated to Ministers or the permanent secretary. I do not say that as any criticism. Although the issue was of concern, there were a range of other concerns and priorities on the mind of the state veterinary service at that time. I think not least of the outbreak that we had just had of classical swine fever, which tied up 80 per cent. of the resources of the veterinary service only a matter of weeks before the immediate crisis hit us.

The hon. Gentleman asked why we did not impose a ban on day one. I have explained that, had we done so, it might have made some difference to the degree to which the disease spread—although no one could quantify that. I deliberately shared with the House Dr. Anderson's specific wording in identifying—the facts very clearly show—that there is no question whatever but that the disease had spread so far before the first case was spotted, never mind confirmed, that such a ban would have made no difference in the end to the fact that Britain was bound to face a dramatic and terrible outbreak.

The hon. Gentleman asked about responsibility for management information. Of course Ministers accept—it is why I said this in my response to the report—responsibility for management information. We also accept that there is a need for much improved IT and services in the Department. I bid for that in the recent comprehensive spending round, but I say to the hon. Gentleman that it was not something that anybody found when they took over the Department in 1997. So let us have a little less lecturing about the state of the Government machine from those who were in charge of it for 20 years. Indeed, with regard to the scientific outcome, Sir Brian Follett talks in his report about the problems that have been caused and suggests that significantly increased funding of research is needed to restore some of the cuts of the past 20 years.

The hon. Gentleman made three particular points to which I should now like to turn. First, on the Army, there is one thing that Opposition Members may not have had the chance to take on board and which I would like to make plain to them: Dr. Anderson considers with care the suggestions so often repeated, not least in this House, that anybody who looked at the Northumberland report would have known that the Army had to he brought in straight away. That is not true; what the Northumberland report says—indeed, I have pointed this out to Opposition Members before—is that when the capacity of civilian labour to dig the holes and make other preparations is exhausted, it will be time to call in the Army. The Army made it plain—I think that there were some colourful quotes from Brigadier Alex Birtwhistle—that one can get from the Yellow Pages people who can do such things. What the Army of today can provide is the logistical support and expertise in providing such support on the ground, especially to deal with carcases.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman made a remark—again, I accept that he cannot know that he has, to some extent, given the House a quotation that does not apply in the way in which he sought to use it—about the wording that Dr. Anderson used with regard to a sense of panic breaking out. Those are Dr. Anderson's words. I was slightly surprised to hear that, because that was not my impression and it has not been confirmed to me by any of the observations that I have heard, from people at a range of levels in dealing with the crisis, related to the centre. [Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) will contain himself, I can say that I have asked Dr. Anderson what he means, and he has told me that, on the ground, he encountered junior officials, people in the control centres and so on—[Interruption.] I am not blaming anybody; hon. Members should contain themselves. I am simply explaining what Dr. Anderson meant—so he tells me and hon. Members are free to ask him—in making the comment that the hon. Gentleman quoted. I can understand his making the assumption that Dr. Anderson wanted it to apply to the centre, but that is not what Dr. Anderson is saying. He is saying that on the ground, as the scale and scope of the disease became apparent, there were considerable difficulties and indeed problems.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman drew attention to what he believed was the key issue: the electoral impact and the reason for the decisions that the Government made. I should like to refer the House to what Dr. Anderson explicitly says on page 102 of his report, in paragraph 11.2:

"Many submissions ⌦ suggested that government ⌦ were heavily influenced by electoral considerations."

Again, I quote:

"We have examined government papers and questioned Ministers and officials but have found no evidence to support such a suggestion. Indeed"—

[Interruption.] I have not finished the quote:

"Indeed, officials at all levels and in many locations are adamant that they were never exposed to any pressures other than the need to control the disease in the best possible way."

Lessons must be learned and this time they must be learned well, not because of the scandalous waste of public money or even the unnecessary culling of so many perfectly healthy animals, but because of the human misery that we all saw throughout the country. Farmers committed suicide, families were broken up, small businesses were lost and people suffered the emotional trauma of seeing their life's work destroyed before their very eyes.

It has to be said that the crisis had its genesis not very recently, but in the 1980s, when complacency set in. The state veterinary service was run down, MAFF offices were closed and valuable research projects were cancelled. But many mistakes were made last year and, although the Secretary of State cherry-picked some of the quotations in her statement, the overall thrust of the report is one of considerable criticism of many of the shortcomings that it exposes. It will require considered reading by those inside and outside the House to ensure that this time the lessons are truly learned. Will the Secretary of State ensure that this time those lessons are not eroded by the passage of time and that no complacency sets in?

Will the right hon. Lady ensure that contingency plans are robust and that resources are made available, not only now, but next year and in the coming years? Will she ensure that those plans are properly rehearsed and constantly updated to reflect changes in risk, because it is clear that risk factors changed enormously and that the plans failed to keep up to date? Will she make those final contingency plans available to Parliament and ask Dr. Anderson to provide an overview so that we may have the benefit of his experience and expertise? None of us wishes ever again to experience a crisis on the scale of last year, nor to see in our constituencies the human misery that was experienced by so many people, and for which so many are still paying the cost.

The hon. Gentleman will not have had time to go through the report. I understand and sympathise with the concern that leads him to talk about the unnecessary culling of so many healthy animals, but he will find when he looks at the report with more care that Dr. Anderson does not find that masses of unnecessary culling was carried out. As regards the contiguous cull—which he says was highly controversial—he identifies the reasons for that being carried out and considers whether the Government may need to have greater powers during another outbreak in different circumstances. One of the points that he makes is that one must never expect precisely the same circumstances to be repeated. He discusses the possibility that on another occasion a pre-emptive cull could halt the disease in its tracks. I understand why the hon. Gentleman makes his point, but it is important that hon. Members do not get the impression that Dr. Anderson says that there was masses of unnecessary killing. He identifies mistakes and says that one can argue about what might have happened in the way of culling if we had had at an earlier stage the information to tackle the disease in the way that was ultimately required. He certainly does not suggest that it could all have been all right and that there was an easy solution—for example, that we could just have vaccinated and did not need to kill.

I share the hon. Gentleman's view that it is important for us to publish contingency plans—although they are not secret; they are on our website—and to encourage people, especially in the industry, to study them, take them on board, and carry out more trial and rehearsal. That is a point that Dr. Anderson makes in general, not only about this particular episode. The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion about inviting Dr. Anderson to comment on the plans, and I will bear that in mind.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that although the report is critical—coming from Cumbria, I cannot see how it could be anything else—the Government got it right by setting up three separate inquiries, as less than 12 months since the outbreak finished, we have the results? Does she also agree that the Anderson report is not a whitewash, as Opposition Members said that it would be?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is entirely right. No doubt a great deal will be said today about how we should have listened to Opposition Members. If we had done so and waited to set up a public inquiry, experts with much more experience than I say that it would just about be setting up its secretariat. We should recognise not only the merits of having those three reports, each of which is demonstrably independent, but the importance of allowing each of them to concentrate on a specific sphere of the matters that needed to be considered. If we had set up one inquiry to examine all the issues, whatever its terms or structure, we would never have got so quickly the information that we need to enable us to make the improvements that have to follow.

May I welcome the Secretary of State's frank admission that some mistakes were made in the handling of this crisis? She also said, however, that better information systems would have been necessary to know that the Army was required at an earlier stage. May I ask her to concede that many of us in the House called repeatedly for the deployment of the Army, using only the time-honoured information systems of listening to our constituents and walking round with our eyes open during the administrative chaos that had descended on our constituencies? Looking to the future, will she lay the contingency plans not only on the website but before Parliament, and arrange for us to have a full debate on them, so that those of us who witnessed an economic catastrophe in our constituencies last year can influence those plans in public with a full debate?

The Secretary of State rightly undertook to look at the 20-day movement restriction. To ensure that it is rigorous but practical, will she consider aligning the rules in England more closely with those now prevailing in Scotland, so that they can be safely and efficiently applied before the beginning of the upland livestock sales, which are crucial to the economies of places such as Wensleydale and Swaledale in my constituency?

I shall begin where the right hon. Gentleman ended, with the 20-day rule. We shall look with very great care at that issue, and we are already consulting with the industry on it. I am conscious of the difficulties that movement restrictions are causing to the industry, but both the reports give grave warnings about the implications of handling that issue. The right hon. Gentleman says that we heard much in the House about the Army—I sat through much of it, at the side of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown)—but what we heard was the Conservatives telling us to do as the Northumberland report said and call in the Army. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that that is not what the Northumberland report said, and that, when the Army felt able to come in and was ready and able to contribute, it was to play a very different role, in a very different context, from the one that it had played in the past.

As for saying that we should listen to what is said by right hon. and hon. Members, of course we do. We paid great attention not least to the right hon. Gentleman when he warned farmers on 5 June 2001, not in the House, for obvious reasons, but through the pages of the Daily Mail, that

"Ministers are already putting in place plans for a mass cull on Friday, as soon as the election is over."

We have heard a great deal about the criticisms and warnings uttered by Opposition Members, and all I can say to them is that, bearing in mind the millions of animals that they claimed were going to be slaughtered the day after the general election, a little modesty on their part might be in order.

I welcome what my right hon. Friend said about the recommendations in the report, in particular on contingency planning. Does she agree that having an effective memorandum of understanding between the Government and all those likely to be involved in tackling a disease outbreak will be very important? I hope that there will he a longer debate on this subject in the autumn, because there are many points that it is impossible to make in a supplementary question to a statement, and they need to be brought out in such a debate. I also recommend to my hon. Friends a re-reading of Hansard, particularly in the light of some of the comments of Opposition Members. Hansard shows that, between February and May last year, the Opposition endorsed the Government's actions very strongly, and that there was co-ordination between Departments from day one.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that nothing in the report contradicts the fact that the cause of the outbreak was two illegal acts: one a failure to heat pig swill to the temperature at which disease would have been eradicated, the other a failure to notify the disease of foot and mouth, which was the disease that farmers and those in the countryside rightly dreaded most?

Finally, I endorse the tributes that my right hon. Friend paid to the many people who worked tirelessly during the outbreak. Although mistakes were made and there are lessons to be learned, there are none the less many unsung heroes who deserve to be recognised.

rose—

Order. Before the Secretary of State replies, let me remind Members that they are entitled to only one supplementary question.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and pay tribute to the work that she did, along with the rest of the ministerial team in which she served, in helping to deal with the terrible consequences of the outbreak.

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the need for a memorandum of understanding. One thing that emerges very clearly from Dr. Anderson's consideration of how crises of this kind can be handled is the need for better flows of information and communication, and for rehearsal and crisis planning. He obviously thinks we should be giving much more attention to that.

I apologise to the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague): I forgot to respond to his request for a debate. While I recognise, as always, that the way in which business is scheduled is not a matter for me, I am well aware that Members want to explore these matters in more depth than is generally possible on occasions such as this.

My right hon. Friend is right to say that, whatever the origin of the specific source of infection, illegal acts were undoubtedly committed at the outset. That is something that none of us should overlook.

If the Secretary of State is so confident that Dr. Anderson has cleared No. 10 of interfering and preventing the Army from coming in, why does she not ask him to publish tapes and full transcripts of the interviews with Ministers, so that the House can at least know the questions that were asked and the replies that were given?

I realise that the Conservative party will be extraordinarily disappointed by what Dr. Anderson has found. He has found that the Prime Minister performed a helpful role in dealing with the disease, and that there is not the slightest evidence of any kind that, in any way or at any level, there was political interference for electoral reasons in the running of the campaign. As for what Dr. Anderson decides to publish, this is, as I have said, an independent report, and it is for Dr. Anderson to decide what he wishes to do.

I was delighted to hear what my right hon. Friend said about contingency plans and the need to review continually from now on. I was also delighted to learn of the genuine recognition that mistakes were made.

As for the question of bringing in the armed forces, it will not surprise my right hon. Friend to learn that the situation was dealt with better in Scotland. In fact, the Secretary of State for Scotland offered to bring in the forces six days before the local authority accepted that kind offer.

One issue that was not raised in the report, perhaps because it was not appropriate to do so, is that of not just the personal but the financial costs incurred by many people. May I suggest that when we debate this matter—as I hope we shall—we consider financial costs, and look seriously at the possibility of insurance, especially for farmers wishing to deal with rare breeds and pedigree stock?

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the whole issue of financial costs and the way in which we can encourage and provide incentives for good practice in the industry. As he says, many people—not least, I suspect, members of the Select Committee—will want to consider all those matters.

Dr. Anderson has written a clear, crisp and clinical report. He has judged the events against five criteria. He mentions planning, and asks whether the contingency plan was comprehensive, up to date and detailed. He mentions the speed of response, the provision of first-rate intelligence and information systems showing what was happening on the ground, the effective mobilisation of the wider resources of Government, and the establishment of trust and the communication between all players. He concludes that the Government fell down on all five criteria.

What is even more alarming, however—because this applied to a BSE incident as well—is the evidence, highlighted by Dr. Anderson, of a silo mentality and an aversion to risk in the Department. Senior people were concerned about the state of preparedness and about whether the Department could respond to an outbreak in terms of resources and mobilisation, but they did not communicate that to the most senior level of management or to Ministers. Will the Secretary of State make it absolutely clear to her Department not just that machinery should exist to enable people's concerns to reach the top, but that people should be not merely encouraged but obliged to communicate those concerns to the top, so that we can hold to account those who must ultimately take political responsibility?

The right hon. Gentleman is probably right in identifying that those are the areas where Dr. Anderson has addressed his concerns. The right hon. Gentleman refers, rightly, to the issue of BSE, which I suspect lies underneath some of the problems of building trust and maintaining good communication.

I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a fair-minded person. Inevitably, many of these things have an element of hindsight. I accept that, when it was thought that there was less than adequate resourcing in, say, the state veterinary service for the scale of problems that it was conceived might at some stage come along, that should have been communicated further up the Department, but those who were expressing those concerns at that time had foot and mouth disease as a relatively low priority on their agenda. Much more immediate issues had hit them.

In his report, Dr. Anderson identifies, for example, that the resources available to the veterinary service were very much what were thought to be adequate in the face of a severe outbreak of foot and mouth disease. What is clearly the case is that no one ever envisaged an outbreak of the severity and precise nature of the one that this country faced.

I have not yet read the Anderson report—I will save it for the beach because anything is better than Frederick Forsyth—hut my right hon. Friend does not have to be defensive. It was not Ministers who went round creating foot and mouth disease. How many million pound cheques were issued to the farming community in terms of compensation? Who will apologise for the slaughter of all those millions of animals, many of which were totally unaffected by foot and mouth disease?

My hon. Friend is right to identify that there were substantial costs associated with the disease. I cannot give him offhand the figures that he seeks, but he probably will find them in Hansard. If not, I am sure we can supply them. He is right to mention the terrible impact on the farming community, not least the animal population. One of the things that he will probably welcome in the report is Dr. Anderson's identification of the effects of the disease. I spoke about Dr. Anderson dismissing many of the myths. One that he dismisses is the often made assertion that foot and mouth disease is not a big problem and that it is like having a common cold. He identifies clearly that it causes considerable suffering to animals, although it is usually only fatal perhaps to very young animals. In consequence, as well as its economic impact, it is not a disease that any country should wish to let go unchecked.

Does the right hon. Lady accept that in view of the nature of international trade it is likely that there will be future outbreaks of foot and mouth and other animal diseases? Does she accept that one of the problems that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food experienced was an absence of sufficient numbers of policy makers? Against that, will she give an undertaking that if there be future outbreaks she will draft in policy makers urgently? With regard to contingency plans, if they are not to become stale, will she undertake that Ministers would personally cause them to be regularly and comprehensively reviewed?

One of the recommendations that Dr. Anderson makes, which I have made clear, I hope. the Government accept, is for regular review and indeed regular rehearsal of contingency plans as a way of keeping them fresh. With his previous ministerial experience, the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know that the Northumberland report recommended that contingency plans should be reviewed regularly. At that time, foot and mouth disease had been so endemic in the country that the recommendation was that they should be reviewed, particularly if there had not been an outbreak for a couple of years. Of course, it was some 30 years before we had another major outbreak; there was a small one in the Isle of Wight under different circumstances.

As I have identified already, we all have to recognise that there is no such thing as zero risk. One of the instruments of policy development on which my Department is now diverting much work is improvement in our methods of risk assessment as well as risk management. That will inform the future work and the reform of the Department.

On the number of policy makers, the key point that comes through clearly from the tone and tenor of Dr. Anderson's remarks is that he feels that Government as a whole should rehearse more and get better at knowing when the trigger is to move things up a stage and involve local authorities, other Departments and so on. That is precisely why we have set up the civil contingencies unit. and we will study its work in the light of these reports.

I welcome the report. As a Cumbrian Member, I fully appreciate the suffering not only of the farmers who had foot and mouth but of those who did not but lived in affected areas and were subject to the restrictions. Yet another group who suffered were people in the tourism industry. Does the Secretary of State agree that we cannot again allow the widespread closure of footpaths, which had a devastating effect on tourism in many parts of my constituency?

My hon. Friend is entirely right. With hindsight, we may note that some local authorities resisted the lifting of the footpaths ban. We need to examine Dr. Anderson's recommendations in this respect more carefully. It is true that the farmers who were not hit by the disease but suffered the economic impact when they could not move their animals were in perhaps the worst position of all. I accept that those were very difficult circumstances. I note that the report says that the disease was thoroughly seeded in Cumbria before the first case was ever identified.

As well as accepting the criticisms in the report that are relevant to people in Northumberland, which was devastated in farming, tourism and other businesses, will the Secretary of State accept the specific suggestion in recommendation 45 that she should conduct research into compensation for communities affected by mass burials, bearing in mind the fact that not one penny of compensation has gone to local businesses or individuals in the Widdrington area, where more than 100,000 carcases were buried and thousands more burned beside the beach?

Dr. Anderson does indeed suggest that we research the issue, although he recognises that it is fraught with legal and other complications. I accept entirely the right hon. Gentleman's concerns for his constituents, but he will know that a great deal of investment has already had to be made to mitigate the impact of what had to be done. Certainly, the issue of how one handles something on this scale pervades the report, and Dr. Anderson has a great deal of value to say on it.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a really excellent statement. Does she recall that her predecessor was also rightly praised for his skilful handling of the outbreak, by the National Farmers Union, the vets and even the Opposition—understandably, because he was following the advice of the National Farmers Union, the vets and, in some cases, even the Opposition—and that things changed only when the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) realised that he could make party political gain out of the situation in the run-up to the general election?

As the report is called "Lessons to be Learned", I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has read the article in the Glasgow Herald today, suggesting that there may be infected meat imported from China, and what action she intends to take.

My right hon. Friend is kind enough to compliment both me and my distinguished predecessor. He is right to say that there was much in the latter's handling of an unprecedented and dreadful set of events that was worthy of praise, and indeed it received it in the House. It comes through clearly in Dr. Anderson's account of the dreadful situation that my predecessor and his ministerial team and officials did their utmost in the face of a situation in which they were not getting the information that they needed to deal with the crisis as effectively as they would wish.

I fear that I have not yet read today's edition of The Herald, but my right hon. Friend puts his finger on a point that was made a moment ago by a Conservative Member—perhaps it was the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies)—who said that there is no such thing as zero risk. There will always be risks, and it is important to maintain surveillance, and to ensure that we identify and obstruct imports; however, that is just the very first step. Even if disease enters this country, there is much more to be done to prevent it from coming into contact with the animal community and—should that happen—to prevent it from spreading. Great emphasis is sometimes placed on the role of imports, but one of the most important lessons in the report is that if disease comes in, we must also address issues such as handling.

Although nobody would impugn the integrity of her predecessor. does the right hon. Lady accept that this report is such a damning indictment of the Government's handling of the outbreak—and such a vindication of the many who offered criticism at the time by calling for vaccination, and so on—that it will be incomprehensible to those whose lives were shattered if the Minister who formerly presided over the Department remains in the Government?

I am really quite shocked at the hon. Gentleman, not least because he is a long-serving and normally sensible Member of this House. It is not true that the report bears out all the criticisms that were made of the use of vaccination; nor is it true that it, or the scientific report, says that vaccination offers an easy answer. Indeed, both reports make it plain that much work is still required before vaccination could be a tool to replace culling. I particularly deplore the hon. Gentleman's remarks because, as a regular and assiduous attender of this House. he was present when my right hon. Friend presented the Phillips inquiry report, and absolutely and adamantly refused to attribute blame to any of those involved, or to call for their resignation. In the light of that, the hon. Gentleman's comments are wrong and quite disgraceful.

I welcome my right hon. Friend's straightforward and honest response to the report; indeed, that was the approach taken by her predecessor during the crisis. However, can she assure me that she will implement all the recommendations, and not just those that she mentioned in passing in her statement? The burning of animals on mass pyres should not be used as a strategy for disposal. It caused not only great distress but considerable damage to the rural economy—particularly to tourism—through the images that were seen on television and in the newspapers. What steps will my right hon. Friend take to ensure that, should we ever have to go down this route again, other methods of disposal will be at hand?

I anticipate that we will accept almost all the recommendations—indeed, we may be able to accept them all—but there are some to which we will need to give further consideration. My hon. Friend will know the perils of saying never in politics, or in life in general. I accept that Dr. Anderson suggests that we should rule out the method to which she refers. If we can follow his other recommendations—such as developing a hierarchy and getting much more information on the capacity to use rendering, along with his various other suggestions concerning the disposal of carcases—it might not be necessary to proceed to such steps, should a similar event occur in future. That is certainly highly desirable, but I am cautious at this stage about saying never. Nevertheless, we will examine that recommendation with great care, along with the others.

The Royal Society's report makes it clear that, in the past 15 years, animal diseases have cost this country £15 billion. Has the Secretary of State considered establishing a national centre of excellence to look into all aspects of animal disease? What work is planned to provide a better understanding of how foot and mouth disease spreads? It was the reaction to the disease, and our perhaps inadequate knowledge of how it spreads, that led to much of the countryside being closed down.

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion, which I undertake to consider, although I am not sure whether we need exactly the sort of institution that he suggests. I accept that we can always benefit from more information about the way in which the disease spreads. However, my understanding of the evidence that has been put forward so far is that it does so through contact, poor biosecurity and so on. Those are relatively familiar mechanisms of spread, although little mention has been made of the variety of strains of foot and mouth disease that exist. As it happens, the strain that hit this country in 2001 was less easily spread by plume. In other circumstances, with different viruses, the position could be different. I accept the right hon. Gentleman's view that there is much to be learned from the Royal Society's investigation, and the Government intend to learn those lessons.

The Secretary of State has already accepted one of the lessons to be learned from this tragic episode, which is the value of visitors to the countryside. When the footpaths were closed and local authorities such as Lincolnshire were hesitant and reluctant to open them, it was the pub, the local shop and the broader rural economy that suffered. Given that, will she move quickly with her already established policy to switch payments to farmers from subsidies for production to payments for creating a landscape and environment that people will want to visit?

My hon. Friend is correct to say that one of the clear lessons from the outbreak was the impact on the wider rural economy, and Dr. Anderson makes it clear that we should take that into account in future planning. On my hon. Friend's final point, the Government will do as much as they can in present circumstances, but he will know that some element of common agricultural policy reform would be of great assistance in that change and that is why we are pursuing it.

I preface my question by expressing the hope that the Secretary of State will find at least two full days for debating this important subject when the House returns in the autumn. Does she understand that the people of Throckmorton are still learning daily the lessons of foot and mouth, with continuing concerns about the environment, the health impact and the total inability to sell houses and rebuild their shattered lives? In the light of recommendation 45, will she look again at the question of compensation? Will she also launch a proper investigation of their concerns about the health and environmental impact of the foot and mouth disease landfill burial site that is located on their doorstep?

I am conscious of the difficulties that have been experienced by the hon. Gentleman's constituents. I am also aware that he has constituency cases in which the issue that was raised by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) concerning compensation particularly arise. I cannot say any more than I have said in the past on that subject, but I accept the points that he makes. He may like to know that in the report Dr. Anderson also considers the environmental and health impacts, and his words about the investigations and inquiries he has made will—I hope—be of some reassurance to the hon. Gentleman's constituents.

My right hon. Friend will know about the significant impact of the disease in north Yorkshire, especially the moorland areas. I pay tribute to the former ministerial team, the officials and the vets, especially for what happened in the hefted areas of the moorland. The BBC, the trading standards people and the national parks people all played an important part in disseminating information. In the light of the lessons learned about biosecurity measures, as outlined in the report, what training will be provided for people in agriculture and vets and what measures will be taken to improve information dissemination in remote areas in future?

My hon. Friend makes an important point and, indeed, Dr. Anderson reports how, in several areas, the best and most effective source of information was the local radio, with regular bulletins and so on. Dr. Anderson is clear that that is one of the lessons that we can all learn. He also identifies the need for an overall communications strategy, not least about subjects such as biosecurity and ensuring better information, training and practice on farms to minimise some of the difficulties that were experienced in the outbreak.

The Secretary of State will agree with me that the whole of the farming community and inward tourism in the United Kingdom suffered in the same way, but will she not learn lessons from different parts of the UK? Northern Ireland managed the disease better; it had very few outbreaks. Given that the disease came into Northern Ireland with smuggled sheep from the north of England and that there are a lot of operators—not the whole of the farming community—in the dealers' yard who need to be penalised and sanctioned, will the right hon. Lady give a commitment to the House that in her review and her recommendations on contingency plans, she will include penalties for those who spread the disease through the mainland and into Northern Ireland?

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. To some degree, but in a slightly different context, he echoes the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Joyce Quin): it was illegal behaviour on someone's part that led to the disease having any impact in the Province. It is clear that one of the things that we must do is to discourage such behaviour because of the dreadful consequences that it has had for so many.

rose—

Order. We must move on to the next statement

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the crash of Chinook ZD 576 on the Mull of Kintyre.

During a routine flight from Aldergrove to Inverness on 2 June 1994, all on board—the 25 passengers and four crew—were killed. What we must remember, above all, is that this was a tragedy. Twenty-nine families lost loved ones that day. The whole House will once again want to extend their sympathy to them. This was also a blow felt throughout the Royal Air Force and in the many other areas of the armed forces and the public service from which the passengers on board were drawn.

This has been the most extensively examined air crash in the history of British military aviation. Not only aviation and engineering experts but at least 10 Ministers from across two Governments—from the right hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind to, most recently, Lord Bach—have considered the case. Each new Minister has, like me, had the advantage of coming to this with an open mind. Every new Minister who has examined the facts of the case has come to the same conclusion.

The senior reviewing officers of the original RAF board of inquiry found the pilots grossly negligent. They concluded that the pilots had flown the aircraft at a consistently high speed at low level, and into poor weather that they had been warned to expect. These facts led the board of inquiry to believe that the only possible conclusion was that this accident was a result of a controlled flight into terrain.

Many have challenged this conclusion. As a result, in April last year a Select Committee was established in the other place to consider the justification for the findings by the senior reviewing officers. The Select Committee concluded that the reviewing officers were not justified in their findings that negligence on the part of the pilots "caused the crash".

The Government have now considered the Select Committee report extremely carefully. We have thoroughly examined the alternative explanations for the crash that were considered by the Committee in the other place. We have painstakingly reviewed the complex technical, legal and airmanship issues which the report raises. We have sought further clarification from Boeing on the points made about its original work conducted as part of the RAF board of inquiry in 1994.

In order to leave no question unanswered, we have also asked Boeing to undertake further work to review its original analysis, including a full FADEC simulation. Those familiar with this case will know that the FADEC system, by controlling the fuel supply, maintains approximately 100 per cent. rotor speed in all conditions and matches engine torque between the two engines on the aircraft. It has been argued that the failure of this system was a cause of the accident.

Our deliberations are now complete, and I am arranging to place in the Library, as well as in the Library of the other place, copies of our response, together with copies of the further work by Boeing. A number of theories have been put forward to explain the cause of the accident. Each theory depends on a particular interpretation of the evidence. That is why at the outset I want to try to set out as best I can those facts that are not actually in dispute. We know that, as before every routine flight, the pilots received meteorological information, in this case, warning them of poor weather conditions in the vicinity of the Mull. They took that into account in planning their route from Aldergrove to the Mull lighthouse; on to Corran, near Fort William; and then up the Great Glen to Fort George, near Inverness.

We know that the first way point entered on the aircraft's navigation computer was very close to the lighthouse on the western tip of the Mull. That way point was the position where the pilots intended to change or adjust their course to head towards Corran. Taking into account the weather conditions, they planned to fly their route at low level under visual flight rules, which means that they needed to maintain at least 1,000 m of visibility. If they were unable to do so during the flight, they would he required under the rules either to turn away from the poor conditions or to climb to a safe altitude of 1,000 ft above the height of any known obstacle. They would then have flown under instrument flight rules, which would require them to fly with sole reference to their cockpit instruments.

We know that the aircraft took off from RAF Aldergrove at 17.42. We know from an exchange between the crew and air traffic control that at just after 17.46 the aircraft was 7 nautical miles from the Aldergrove radio beacon. A number of witnesses reported the aircraft flying low as it headed for the coast. Those sightings are consistent with a high-speed, low-level transit towards the Mull along the planned track.

We know from the data in the SuperTANS navigation system on board every Chinook that the aircraft was 0.81 nautical miles from the lighthouse when the pilots took the steps necessary to enter the second way point—89 miles away at Conan—into the computer. Given their training and experience, the pilots would not have performed that task if they had been experiencing any significant difficulty in handling the aircraft. The Committee in the other place accepted that it was highly unlikely that the pilots would have entered the way-point change if they had thought they were not in control of their aircraft.

We know from all the eye witnesses on the Mull that the weather there was generally foggy and very bad—indeed, consistent with the meteorological advice. The lighthouse keeper estimated visibility to be 15 to 20 m at most.

We know from the power down recording in the SuperTANS system that the time of initial impact was 17.59 and 36 seconds, giving a total journey time of just under 18 minutes. From those facts we can calculate that the ground speed of the aircraft from the air traffic control fix to impact averaged 158 knots, which shows that the pilots had selected a high cruising speed for their crossing to the Mull.

We know that the ground speed at impact was at least 147 knots from the evidence on the aircraft's instruments at the crash site and corroborated by data extracted from the global positioning system and the navigation computer.

We know that the aircraft hit the ground at a height of 810 ft above sea level. All the evidence clearly points to the aircraft having flared—or "pulled up" in layman's terms—with its nose upward at an angle of 30 deg in the final few seconds of flight. That is shown not only by the physical evidence at the crash site—in particular, the alignment of the fuselage—but by the fact that the collective control, which controls power, was set at or near full travel at impact, with the cyclic control, which controls pitch or elevation, at 25 per cent. aft and 23 per cent. left of neutral, all indicating a demand for high power and nose-up attitude in what was probably a last desperate attempt to pull away. That evidence at the crash site also indicates that the aircraft was almost certainly responding properly to its controls, at least in the final seconds before impact.

Those then are the facts, which have not been seriously challenged by anyone. What remains at issue is what happened in the last 20 seconds or more of the flight, from the point at which the pilots entered the way point change into the navigation computer until moments before impact, when they pulled hard up in a clear attempt to avoid hitting the ground. Various theories have been put forward and we have considered each in turn. They are examined in detail in our fuller response which has been placed in both Libraries.

One hypothesis suggests that, because of the low cloud, the pilots had slowed down for the way point change, intending to turn left to hug the coast towards the way point at Con-an while remaining at low level. The Committee in the other place has accepted that the aircraft was performing satisfactorily up to and including the way point change. It suggests that, the aircraft having performed the required deceleration successfully, some catastrophic failure occurred in the last 20 or more seconds of flight. That failure caused the aircraft to accelerate out of control so that it flew at high speed into the Mull, with the pilots unable to control the aircraft, at least until the final few seconds.

Was it the crew's intention to slow down significantly for the way point change? Boeing's analysis shows that, given a normal rate of acceleration, it would not have been possible to achieve the speed conditions for the final flare if the ground speed was below 80 knots at the way point change. If the aircraft had slowed to around 80 knots at that point, an even higher average cruising ground speed from the air traffic control fix to the way point change would have been necessary and, crucially, the aircraft would have begun to decelerate about one mile before the way point change and, in the process, to reduce power considerably, adopting a nose-up attitude for a considerable period. Such a manoeuvre is not consistent with any of the evidence.

In addition, the further analysis from Boeing shows that, given a normal rate of acceleration, it would not have been possible to accelerate from below 80 knots and achieve the speed conditions necessary to be consistent with the final flare just before impact.

Even if the aircraft had performed the manoeuvres necessary to slow to 80 knots at the way point change, what plausible explanations could account for the pilots not being able to execute the turn and to cause the aircraft to accelerate to the known speed at impact? And what sort of incident could have cleared in time to allow the pilots to perform the final flare in the seconds just before impact?

It has been suggested that a control jam of some sort could have occurred. For that to have happened, the aircraft would first have had to be rotated nose down to an accelerating attitude, the power set to full and the controls "frozen" to such an extent that neither a heading change, nor a climb, nor a speed change was possible. Moreover, that condition would have had to have remained fixed throughout the significant period required to achieve the acceleration. To achieve those conditions either simultaneous multiple failures would have had to have occurred to the pitch of the aircraft and have frozen the controls, or the pilots would have had voluntarily to conduct at least some of the extraordinary control combinations needed themselves.

The Committee in the other place also explored the possibility that the thrust balance spring attachment bracket and other inserts detached before impact, as some of these flying control components were found to be detached at the crash site. But because the controls are hydraulically powered, such a fault would result in a change to the "feel" of those controls and would be detected by the pilots. Moreover, the aircraft would still be controllable. It is not credible that that could have caused the accident as it occurred. In any event, the report from the air accidents investigation branch indicated that the brackets were likely to have become detached during the post-accident break-up of the aircraft.

Despite suggestions from other commentators, the Committee in the other place accepted that the FADEC system and the trials of the Chinook Mark 2 which had been suspended at Boscombe Down had no bearing on this accident. In fact all the available evidence indicates that the engines were working normally up to the point of impact. The Committee was also satisfied that the E5 software fault, which has also been the subject of much media speculation, had no relevance to this accident.

We have examined in detail all the alternative hypotheses put to the Committee by witnesses. The question is, when taken in the context of the whole flight, are they, or is any one of them, plausible—plausible against the strict standard of proof needed at that time before a finding of negligence could be made against deceased aircrew?

As the Committee observes, the standard of proof of "absolutely no doubt whatsoever" is even higher than that applicable in criminal cases. I am, of course, aware that four of the five members of the Committee in the other place are distinguished lawyers.

It also follows from this strict standard of proof that if there is another plausible explanation for what took place other than the one accepted by the board of inquiry, its conclusion cannot be allowed to stand. The reviewing officers in this case were required to be in no doubt whatsoever that the pilots' negligence was a cause—although not necessarily the sole cause—of the accident.

No investigation into a serious accident can ever hope to answer every question with absolute certainty. Negligence can itself be the cause of an accident, or it can be one of a number of factors. The reviewing officers were charged with considering all of the evidence as a whole; they were entitled to call on their own knowledge and experience of military flying, and to take proper recognition of the very high standard of airmanship that is required of RAF pilots.

It follows that if the senior reviewing officers were left with no "honest" doubt that the pilots were negligent, and that the negligence was a causative factor in what happened, they would have failed in their duty if they had not found the pilots to be negligent. It would have been wrong of the reviewing officers to avoid such a finding on the basis of a hypothesis for which there was no plausible evidence.

The senior reviewing officers' finding of negligence was not dependent upon whether the pilots could see the Mull at the time of the way point change. We can deduce that at some point the aircraft entered cloud—which the crew had been warned to expect—well below what was the safety altitude. The issue is whether at the time that they did so the aircraft was fully under the control of the pilots. There is no other plausible explanation for the accident: the only realistic explanation is that found by the reviewing officers of the board of inquiry.

As they approached land, the pilots would have been aware that their visibility was about to reduce significantly. Had they been flying with the minimum visibility allowed for visual flight rules, by the way point change they would have seen the landmass of the Mull and would have recognised their perilous position. They should have taken prompt action by flying higher or by turning away. The finding of negligence is therefore based on the fact that they failed to take such avoiding action.

This is a sensitive and emotive case. I recognise that some people would have liked to reach a different conclusion from that of the reviewing officers. Indeed, some former Ministers have since changed their minds about their original interpretation of the facts. However, we require senior military officers to make decisions on the facts at the time, applying their judgment as professional airmen against the high standard of airmanship to which the Royal Air Force adheres.

We have therefore reviewed the material put forward by the Committee with the very greatest care. We have considered the alternative hypotheses rigorously to see if there is any other plausible explanation that fits with the facts. We have agonised over whether there was some way in which we could exonerate the pilots posthumously, but on the basis of all the evidence, I am unable to do so.

Apportioning blame for such a terrible accident to men who lost their lives in it was not an easy task for those responsible. Reviewing the circumstances of the case has been one of the hardest duties that I have been asked to perform as a Minister. Nevertheless, where lives have been lost, we must be willing to examine the facts as carefully and dispassionately as possible, for the sake of all those involved. This we have done.

I know that this response to the Select Committee's report will be unwelcome to some. As I have consistently stated before, should new evidence come to light, I would certainly be prepared to look at that evidence again. Indeed, it was precisely the possibility of new evidence that led me to commission the further work from Boeing.

I hope that this statement and the supporting detailed analysis which is being published today will assist the House in understanding the reasons why we have not been able to support the conclusions of the latest report into this tragic accident.

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement and of the material which he is placing in the Library. I think that the House understands how difficult this case has been for Ministers to deal with, and we are grateful for the care that the right hon. Gentleman has obviously taken. However, we, like many others, continue to be drawn inescapably to the conclusion that this is not a safe verdict.

Today is another sad day for the families and all those who lost their loved ones on that fateful day, 2 June 1994—and especially for the families of the two pilots. I join the Secretary of State in reiterating our sympathy to all those who were bereaved. In criticising the right hon. Gentleman for his announcement today, I stress that the issue is one of natural justice, not one of party. Indeed, as the right hon. Gentleman noted, we have been pressing for the reversal of a mistaken decision taken under the previous Conservative Administration—a decision that the Secretary of State's predecessor, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred, and my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), the then Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, have said should be reversed.

May I also make it clear that we do not seek to challenge the honour or integrity of Ministers or senior RAF officers? However, we believe that they should be prepared to review their original decision in this matter, because the RAF rules in force at the time provided that the deceased aircrew should be found negligent only when there was "absolutely no doubt whatsoever". That is a very much higher standard of proof than "beyond all reasonable doubt" which is usually required in criminal trials in civilian courts. It means that every other possible explanation of the crash must be disproved, and in this case that cannot be done.

May I refer briefly to the Secretary of State's own statement today? At one point, he said:

"This evidence at the crash site also indicates that the aircraft was almost certainly responding properly to its controls, at least in the final seconds before impact".

I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that "almost certainly" is not "absolutely no doubt whatsoever". He then went on to say

"These, then, are the facts".

I put it to him that these are not the facts.

Later on, the statement refers to senior reviewing officers who were left with "no honest doubt". I do not know the legal antecedents of that term "no honest doubt", but it is not the same as "absolutely no doubt whatsoever". That is the basis of the case expressed by those who object to this verdict.

The inquiry conducted by the Committee in the other place, chaired by someone who is not only a distinguished lawyer but a former judge in the Scottish Appeal Court, concluded that the Ministry's original report was not sufficiently based on fact, but was based on assumptions that have subsequently been challenged. I put it to the Secretary of State that most of the Boeing evidence is conjecture, not fact, and that even Boeing cannot be said to be the most impartial witness. I do not question the company's integrity but as manufacturer of the aircraft it certainly has an interest in the outcome of the inquiry. Pilots also question the reliability of data, to which the Secretary of State referred, from the SuperTANS navigation system.

How can the Secretary of State continue to sustain this position, except in the most legalistic of terms? He dismisses others who have challenged the board of inquiry findings. However, may I point out that the report from the other place supports three other independent inquiries? The air accidents investigation branch did not conclude that the pilots had been negligent. The fatal accident inquiry concluded that it had not been established

"on the balance of probabilities"

that the cause of the accident was due to the decisions taken by the crew.

The "balance of probabilities" is the weakest possible argument that a court would accept in a civil case. It is very much easier to accept a guilty verdict on the balance of probabilities than on absolutely no doubt whatsoever.

The Select Committee on Defence, while avoiding the question of blame for the accident, questioned the procedures that led to the controversies. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found that the verdict of the RAF board of inquiry was "unsustainable" and recommended that it should be set aside.

Surely, after all that, the conclusions of the Select Committee in the other place cannot simply be ignored. For the Government to persist in their verdict is, in the minds of many, very difficult to accept.

The Secretary of State's mantra is that there is "no new evidence". However, the case made by both the PAC and the Select Committee in the other place is not that they have uncovered "new evidence" but that there was insufficient evidence at the time to reach the verdict of gross negligence beyond absolutely no doubt whatsoever.

Ultimately, this is not a legal argument, but an argument about natural justice. Does the Secretary of State understand that pilots still serving in the armed forces feel utterly betrayed by the Ministry of Defence on this issue? Can the right hon. Gentleman really put his hand on his heart and tell the House today that he believes that there is "absolutely no doubt whatsoever" that these pilots, who were mostly highly trained, who had unblemished records and who were carrying such a notably precious cargo of intelligence officers, together committed the most cardinal and basic errors in airmanship? In the civilian world, is this not virtually the equivalent of finding the pilots guilty of manslaughter—despite the fact that the fatal accident inquiry could not reach that verdict even on "the balance of probabilities"?

In all honesty, some doubt continues to exist in the minds of many of those who have studied all the issues very closely. In all humanity, the Secretary of State should reopen the RAF board of inquiry and review the verdict.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his mostly dispassionate account of the response. I invite right hon. and hon. Members as they approach this issue to try to do the same. Perhaps once they have gone through my statement in more detail and looked at the fuller account that has been published and made available, they will see the care with which the Ministry of Defence has entirely dispassionately approached this issue.

I hope that my reasoning conforms to the hon. Gentleman's analysis. I have sought to demonstrate that there is no doubt whatsoever. I have done that by very carefully relying on the facts about which there is no substantial dispute. I set them out for the benefit of the House. Perhaps with more time, right hon. and hon. Members will have the opportunity of considering those facts—and they are facts—extremely carefully.

The hon. Gentleman said that every other possible explanation must be disproved. I take issue with him only in that that should be "every other plausible explanation". We are not dealing with explanations that do not stand up. I hope that, when he looks more carefully at my statement and the material in the Library, he will see that each and every explanation has been gone through with a very considerable amount of rigour. Indeed, that was precisely why I specifically asked Boeing again to go through the material that it had made available to the board of inquiry, and to do so from scratch with appropriate care. That report is also available to hon. Members.

The point about honest doubt was simply a reference to the duty placed on the reviewing officers. I was not referring to the burden of proof at that stage. Again, if the hon. Gentleman looks carefully at my statement, he will see that to be so.

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the Boeing report—I accept that he may not have had the opportunity to do so in detail as yet—he will see that these are not assumptions. These are very carefully worked-through facts arising from a detailed analysis of what took place during that flight.

On evidence and so on, what is important is that we consider the facts of the case and not simply how people may feel. I entirely recognise the obvious, understandable human sympathy. I have spent some considerable time since I was appointed to this office talking to helicopter pilots about the accident. Although there are certainly some who feel betrayed, I must tell the hon. Gentleman and the House that there are others who feel very differently about the matter. So I do not think that the anecdotal experience of helicopter pilots is particularly helpful in these circumstances.

As the hon. Gentleman says—I make no argument with him—the issue is whether there was sufficient evidence. I invite right hon. and hon. Members dispassionately to consider that evidence, which is available in the Library. I hope that they will notice as they analyse my statement today that I have excluded pieces of evidence about which there is some doubt simply in order to rely on the known facts rather than to try to form a hypothesis based on disputed ones. I have consciously and deliberately excluded and not mentioned today pieces of evidence that are largely favourable to the reviewing officers simply because there is some doubt about its reliability. On the basis of evidence and the known facts, I invite right hon. and hon. Members to accept what I have set out to the House today.

May I begin by associating myself with the Secretary of State's preliminary remarks about the terrible consequences of the tragic accident for many people? He urged us all to be dispassionate, and so we should be, but I regret that I cannot conceal my disappointment at the nature of his statement to the House of Commons. Nothing that he has said today has shaken my belief that the board of inquiry, in good faith, made an error of judgment and failed to apply the necessary high standard of proof. Its failure led to an injustice that the House ought to put right.

I find it difficult to understand why the Secretary of State should attach so little weight to the views of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the then Secretary of State for Defence, who says that he would not have accepted the findings of the board of inquiry had he known then what he knows now. Can the right hon. Gentleman recall a similar instance in which a former Secretary of State has publicly sought to reverse a difficult decision that he took during his tenure as Secretary of State? I most certainly cannot—it is a unique feature of this matter.

How can the Secretary of State justify ignoring the conclusions of the sheriff, Sir Stephen Young, conscientious to a fault, who presided over the fatal accident inquiry for 16 days, supervised two days of legal submission, and wrote a judgment in excess of 120 pages, but could not accept the Ministry of Defence's explanation of the way in which the accident occurred? How can the Secretary of State fail to accept the conclusions of a Select Committee of the House of Lords chaired by Lord Jauncey, one of Scotland's most eminent judges in recent times? He concluded that the standard of "absolutely no doubt whatsoever" was simply not present and did not justify the conclusions of the board of inquiry? Do not those independent, impartial and painstaking conclusions fatally undermine the finding of negligence against those pilots?

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who has looked at the issue over a long period of time. I do not in any way take lightly his serious comments, but I hope that he will look at the further report from Boeing and my statement to the House today in considerable detail, as I believe that they will satisfy a number of his concerns.

I invited Sir Malcolm Rifkind to my office when it was clear that the matter would be raised again, and we had a thorough and detailed conversation. I accept that Sir Malcolm is not here to give his side of the story, but his essential point was that were he to look at the case again today he would reach a different view from that which he took at the time. While that is a perfectly proper position, it is not a sufficient reason for disturbing a carefully thought-through finding from the board of inquiry. As I indicated at the outset in my statement, at least 10 Ministers from two different Governments have looked independently and separately at the issue, serving their country and the House of Commons as best they could at the time, and each independently came to the conclusion that the findings of the board of inquiry were justified.

The weighing of evidence, however, from different sources, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman and others are undoubtedly seeking, is not necessarily the right approach. The right way is to look objectively at known facts that can be established beyond any reasonable doubt, and to apply the circumstances of the case to those known facts. I simply make it clear to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the Committee in the other place accepted that at the way point change the aircraft was functioning normally. It is also clear that in the last few seconds the aircraft responded to a command from the pilots because it gained ground and hit the Mull in a particular way. It did not hit the Mull head on. It hit the Mull having responded to what was clearly an effort to pull up in time to avoid an impending crash.

In those circumstances, any plausible explanation of what went wrong must satisfy the pretty stiff test of what could have happened in those last 20 seconds that arguably cleared itself by the time the pilots were in a position to take what they tried to take—avoiding action. I should be grateful if right hon. and hon. Members would concentrate on that 20-second period, because it is the crucial period, as members of the Select Committee accepted. They accepted that the aircraft was functioning properly at the way point change.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement today and accept that it is not an easy duty for him to perform. I respect his attempt to be dispassionate, and his success in that, but it is difficult for me to be dispassionate. Under the previous Government, I was a member of the Defence Committee that decided not to hold an inquiry. I now regret that and I congratulate the House of Lords on holding its inquiry.

When people in our armed forces put their lives in harm's way to defend our country and our democracy, it is fair for them to assume that they have, at the very least, rights equal to those of every other citizen whom they seek to defend—in other words, that the onus of proof is not on the deceased, but on those who say that they were to blame. The onus of proof today, I say with respect to my right hon. Friend, is on him. I have not heard anything in his statement or read anything so far that supports the decision of the Secretary of State to come to the House and support a board of inquiry that consisted of two air marshals against a previous RAF inquiry that found that there were no human failures at all.

If my hon. Friend studies my statement, he will see quite clearly that I accept—and I set it out for the benefit of the House—that it is a question of being able to show that there is no other plausible explanation. I conceded to the House, and I concede again, that if there is another plausible explanation, the test set by the board of inquiry under the relevant rules will not have been satisfied. There is no other plausible explanation.

This simply will not do, will it? The Secretary of State accepts that he has to rule out all other plausible hypotheses, and in doing so he has to accept that, unless he can disprove something else that is plausible, it is not enough to say that there is no evidence that something did not happen; he has to disprove it. So will the Secretary of State please explain to the House why he personally has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that, for example, neither of the pilots was taken ill during the last two minutes of the flight?

Because, again, as I told the House a few moments ago, having looked carefully at the facts as agreed—so far, none of the facts has been challenged by anyone in the House, although I recognise that everyone must have the opportunity of reading the reports in detail—the issue is what happened in those last 20 seconds or so. The Committee in the other place accepted that, at the way point change, the aircraft was working properly. The evidence is that in the last few seconds, there was a flare—the aircraft was pulled up suddenly in order to avoid what was clearly going to be a crash.

There is no evidence whatsoever of any possible reason why, in between, the pilots were not fully in control of the aircraft. In any event, the point that the right hon. Gentleman overlooks is that the reviewing officers found negligence even before the way point change, given the distances involved, the cloud cover of the Mull, and the altitude at which the aircraft was then flying. The issue is not what happened in the last 20 seconds, although I recognise that if there were any possible explanation, it would enormously help the effort that the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members have made to disprove the findings of the board of inquiry. However, I have heard nothing to suggest that that is the case.

I refer to the question that I asked on 19 March at column 244 of Hansard and repeat it: what explanation has been given by the Ministry of Defence as to why it did not tell Malcolm Rifkind that legal proceedings were taking place against Boeing?

I am not in a position to answer that question precisely, as that was obviously a matter for previous Ministers. My hon. Friend will be aware of the rules affecting papers supplied to previous Ministers. In any event, the question of legal proceedings arose out of the testing procedures relating to FADEC. [Interruption.] If my hon. Friend will listen to the answer, I can tell him that the Committee in the other place made it clear that the FADEC issue was not, in its judgment, relevant to anything arising from the causation of the crash.

May I commend the Secretary of State for having the courage to come to the House and make a statement about an accident which has understandably caused deep emotion? Is it not the case, however, that in analysing military accidents, or any flying accident, we must be guided only by the truth as the circumstances disclose it? Is it not true that the more one looks into the causes of this accident, the clearer it becomes that the original judgment of the reviewing officers, Sir William Wratten and Sir John Day, was correct? Is it not, prima facie, negligent to fly a serviceable aircraft in instrument meterological conditions in the proximity of high ground? In those circumstances, the finding was entirely correct. I applaud the Secretary of State on this occasion, and, as probably the only person in the House who spent his formative years in military cockpits, I think that most professional people will agree with the judgment that he has given to the House today.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I would be less than honest with the House if I did not say that there were times when I thought that it might have been easier to take a different way out. I am grateful for his observations about the fact that I chose not to do so.

I thank my right hon. Friend for coming to the House to make the statement, as it would have been very easy for him to hide away for the recess. It would also be helpful for us to have a debate in the House after the recess, as well as the one that I imagine will be conducted in the House of Lords.

My right hon. Friend said that there had been a painstaking review of the complex technical, legal and airmanship issues raised by the report, and that he had placed the Boeing evidence in the Library. I therefore believe that legal advice will also have been available to him. Will he place that in the Library as well, as it is that aspect that causes many of us the gravest doubt? As he said, in order to secure a judgment of gross negligence, there must be absolutely no doubt whatsoever. This is such a narrow area that it is important that we see what seems to have been the major stumbling block for Jauncey and others. Many of us think that 10 Ministers coming to the same conclusion on the basis of the same advice from the same group of officials is not a source of consolation.

Is it not the case that the black box cannot be found in military helicopters, that TANS is no substitute for a black box and that conclusions about anything that happened are drawn on the basis not of facts, but of hypotheses that can be challenged and in which lie the doubts that many of us have about the soundness of the judgment?

I am sorry that my hon. Friend chooses to phrase his comments about Ministers in that way; perhaps he will reconsider.

It is true.

I assure him—I suspect that other Ministers can confirm this—that a new Minister in a Department who is faced with such an issue wants to ensure that it is considered thoroughly and properly. I knew that at some stage I would have to face the House of Commons, and that simply to accept the advice that was put in front of me would not necessarily equip me with the arguments and information that I would need to be able to answer right hon. and hon. Members' questions. It is for others to judge whether I am able to do so. I assure my hon. Friend that I personally—and other Ministers serving in the Department—have gone to a great deal of trouble to challenge the advice put in front of us.

On the legal advice, I doubt whether any Minister could have set a higher bar as regards what it is necessary for the Ministry of Defence to show in order not to disturb the finding of the board of inquiry than to say that there should be "absolutely no doubt whatsoever" that negligence occurred. I have accepted the highest legal standard that any Member of Parliament has ever proposed to the Ministry of Defence. In those circumstances, my hon. Friend's looking at the legal advice—which in any event, as he knows, is not something that any Department publishes—would not assist him, because I have accepted that there should be a very high standard for the Department to satisfy in order not to disturb the original finding.

Is the Secretary of State aware that the parents of Jonathan Tapper are constituents of mine? Jonathan Tapper was an officer with a completely unblemished record and a true professional of the utmost integrity. Given that three reports—the fatal accident inquiry, the House of Lords Select Committee report and the Public Accounts Committee report—overruled the finding of gross negligence, the parents of the two pilots were hoping and praying that the Secretary of State would follow those reports and quash the finding of gross negligence. Does he understand the heartache and grief that those families are suffering? Does he also understand that it is bad enough to lose a loved one, without having to endure the slur of gross negligence, as well as the inference that, had they lived, the pilots would have been guilty of manslaughter? All that those parents are asking for is to have their sons' names cleared, so what advice can he give to enable them to do that?

I understand to some extent. Although I do not claim possibly to be able to share the anguish that they have gone through, I understand the difficulties that they have faced and I have sought to face up to them myself. As I said in reply to the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), I thought of taking what would have been politically a much easier way out than coming here to make the statement, but I felt unable to do that having personally considered carefully the facts of the case and having gone through an enormous amount of detailed information about the circumstances. I am sorry that I am unable to assist the hon. Gentleman in the way that he describes.

The Father of the House suggested that the Secretary of State should look at the papers that misled Sir Malcolm Rifkind in reaching his conclusion about the accident. Would my right hon. Friend welcome an initiative by Sir Malcolm to lift the ban on present incumbents looking at previous incumbents' papers?

The Secretary of State said that he felt unable at the present time to conclude that he should overturn the decision. On several occasions he told us to consult his statement carefully. I have a copy of it here. One of the phrases that he used is that there was to be "no doubt whatsoever that the pilots' negligence was a cause—although not necessarily the sole cause—of the accident." Does not that shift the grounds of the standard of proof from what we had all thought them to be—that is, "absolutely no doubt whatsoever"? Is not there a worrying trend among suppliers of armaments to the Government whereby when rifles do not work properly, the suppliers blame the service men for not being able to fire them, and when helicopters do not fly properly Boeing lends its weight to blaming the pilots?

I would certainly be willing to look at Sir Malcolm Rifkind's papers and I have indicated all along that I would be willing to look at any new evidence. As I said to the House earlier, I commissioned a new report—which is now available to right hon. and hon. Members—specifically because I wanted to see from scratch the material that was available, so far as it could be, to Ministers. I am certainly willing to consider any further material that anyone supplies to me at any stage. I do not, however, accept my right hon. Friend's further observations; they are unfair, and that is not the way in which we have gone through this process.

May I express my disappointment at the missed opportunity to overturn the findings of negligence against the Chinook pilots, Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook? Will the Secretary of State confirm that, if there were to be an RAF board of inquiry today, it would not be able to reach a finding of negligence because the rules were changed after the crash on the Mull of Kintyre?

That is absolutely right. After asking that question, however, the hon. Gentleman must ask himself whether it would be right, once the rules have been changed, for us retrospectively to apply a different standard to events that occurred in the past. He is asking only half the question.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on the way in which he has approached this statement. If we were looking at these matters in terms of a balance of probabilities, he would certainly have a point. But, as the Public Accounts Committee found, that is not what we are looking at. The Committee—an all-party Committee—considered the legal and technical evidence as thoroughly as it could, and used very strong language to express the view that the Ministry of Defence, in continuing to support the two senior officers, was guilty of "unwarrantable arrogance". That was a very strong statement from the Public Accounts Committee, and it came to that conclusion because of the dispute about the words "absolutely no doubt whatsoever".

I want to put a question to the Secretary of State, and he must answer it if he is to convince the House of Commons. Looking at what the House of Lords report said, is the Secretary of State telling the House of Commons that he has

"absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the pilots intended to overfly the cloud-covered Mull"?

Is he also telling the House of Commons that, in his view and in the absence of a black box, there was

"absolutely no doubt whatsoever that some mechanical failure had not caused a loss of control of the aircraft"?

Is that what the Secretary of State is telling the House of Commons?

I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's observations about the term "unwarrantable arrogance". That represented one of the most disappointing aspects of the Public Accounts Committee's report, not least because the Committee failed, for example, to call the reviewing officers to give their own evidence. It struck me as somewhat inconsistent of the Committee to reach that very strong conclusion without having called all those who could give relevant evidence as to what had taken place.

On the hon. Gentleman's second question, I am entirely satisfied that at this stage there is no plausible explanation other than that the pilots themselves were responsible for negligently flying the aircraft into the Mull.

May I say to the Secretary of State and to my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) that I am glad that this is not a party matter? The Secretary of State has shown evidence that he has approached this with an open mind, that there is no other plausible explanation with any proof attached to it, and that those on both sides of the House who are asking for any implausible explanation to be ruled out by evidence are going far beyond the natural consequences of the decisions that, sadly, the pilots took when they flew that aeroplane in the direction that they did, at the height that they did and at the speed that they did.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I would simply invite right hon. and hon. Members to look carefully at the facts, and to deal with each of them as they are set out in the report that we have made available to Members of the House.

Will the Secretary of State take it from me that a large number of us are genuinely sorry—in my case, on behalf of my constituents at Boscombe Down—that a statement has been made this afternoon that changes absolutely nothing? Will he tell me whether he has at any stage discussed this statement and the outcome of his deliberations with the Prime Minister?

The usual discussions have taken place across Government for many years. I come to the House presenting a settled Government view.

Given that a number of independent, qualified and distinguished individuals who have investigated have declined to blame the pilots, and given that it is really rather undesirable for the Ministry of Defence to have the final say, would it not be best to appoint a senior judicial figure to review all the existing evidence and make a report?

That is certainly a possible option, and I would not rule it out. I think, however, that the senior judicial figure would be much better served if new evidence could be added to the existing evidence, because he or she would then have something to deal with.

The right hon. Gentleman's statement was littered with uses of the word "plausible", referring to alternative explanations for the crash. Surely the problem is that what the Secretary of State, the senior reviewing officer and the board of inquiry are inviting us to believe is itself implausible. It is implausible that two pilots who had expressed doubts about the quality of their aircraft should then fly, at such a height and speed, into cloud and into the Mull, with a cargo of such value. There was no data recorder and no voice cockpit recorder, and one of the digital engine control units was destroyed in the crash. Does the Secretary of State accept that he cannot ask us to uphold a wholly implausible view without "absolutely no doubt whatsoever", and that he has not the evidence to sustain that?

Sadly for the hon. Gentleman, the only explanation that fits all the known and agreed facts is the conclusion reached by the board of inquiry: that the pilots flew the aircraft at high speed, low, in contravention of the "visual flight rules", into the Mull. Unfortunately, that is the only explanation that fits the known facts. I wish it were otherwise, but that is the position.

If the pilots had lived, albeit having done something negligent, would they not have been able to speak in their own defence? Was it not therefore deeply unsatisfactory that under the rules before this incident, deceased pilots could be blamed when they could not speak in their own defence? Is it not a fact that the reason for the belated recognition that that is unsatisfactory is this very case; and is it not a fact that a verdict of this kind could never be reached again as a result of dissatisfaction about what has happened in this very case?

Why does the Secretary of State not reconsider his answer to the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), and say that it would be possible to revisit the circumstances and decide that the application of the rules to this case at that time constituted a basic injustice? Surely the revoking of the rules represents a belated acknowledgement that they were unjust when applied to the deceased pilots.

I certainly agree that the two pilots would have been the best witnesses. Part of the tragedy is the fact that they are not available to give us their evidence. Nevertheless, neither the hon. Gentleman nor any other Member should try to avoid the fact that the best evidence is not available on numerous occasions. On such occasions, we must still try to make judgments on the basis of what evidence is available. That, sadly, applies to this case.

The change in the system does not undermine the fact that the reviewing officers and the board of inquiry considered the case in the light of the test and the rules that applied at the time. If the hon. Gentleman applies his perfectly logical reasoning to the situation, he will realise that if that were not the case any single decision made at any tribunal or court in our history could be challenged simply because subsequent generations took a different view of what test should have applied at the time. That would simply not be satisfactory.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will recall that, at columns 476-77 last Thursday, in relation to the statutory instrument Local Government Finance (England) Special Grant Report (No. 105) on Invest to Save Budget Round 4 Projects and Local Government On-Line, I raised the fact that, as at half-past 3 on Thursday, the relevant statutory instrument was not printed and was not in the Vote Office. The Chairman of Ways and Means gave a ruling at the time:

"It follows that there should be at least one copy in the Library. If, as the hon. Gentleman says, a supply of fully printed copies is not yet available in the Vote Office nine days after the laying of the document. that is indeed most regrettable."—[Official Report. 18 July 2002: Vol. 389, c. 477.]

That was a pretty strong ruling. I subsequently discovered that a copy was not even in the Library, which must be pretty close to contravening the rules of the House.

We discussed the statutory instrument in Standing Committee at 4.30 pm today, and we discovered that it had not even been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. That seems to be pretty close to breaking the rules of the House, if not actually breaking them. It is certainly breaking the spirit of the workings of the House.

This is an extremely sloppy way of working the part of the Government. I raised the matter in Committee on a point of order. I asked for the instrument to be postponed. but the Chairman ruled that he was empowered to consider only whether it had been properly considered by the Committee. I would like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to rule that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister should follow better working practices when laying statutory instruments in the House. It was not even an urgent statutory instrument. It could have been laid in the House in the autumn.

I note what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I believe that that procedure is not unprecedented.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill has been debated in another place and I am pleased to say that it has been passed there without amendment. It is a short and perhaps slightly technical Bill but it seeks to tackle a fast-growing and significant problem: the theft of mobile phones. There has been much public, parliamentary and media concern in recent months about mobile phone theft and street crime in general. The Bill will help to deal with some of those concerns.

We are determined to tackle street crime through a comprehensive programme of measures across government, the police service, the courts and the criminal justice system. The Bill should be seen as a part of that wider programme. It is fully supported by the police and the mobile phone industry as part of the fight against street crime.

There is now a broad body of evidence, some of it anecdotal, some statistical, that the theft of mobile phones has contributed significantly to the rise in street robberies. Therefore, tackling mobile phone theft can play an important part in driving down street crime.

A Home Office report on mobile phone theft was published in January 2002. It showed that in 2000–01, mobile phones were stolen in 28 per cent. of all robberies, compared with 8 per cent. only three years previously. Since 1995, there has been a 600 per cent. increase in mobile phone owners. There are about 50 million mobile phone users in the United Kingdom. Clearly, the opportunity for mobile phones to be stolen is significantly greater than a few years ago. None the less, the only conclusion that we can draw is that robberies involving mobile phones are increasing at a much greater rate than robberies in general.

In the Metropolitan police area alone, the percentage of offences in which a mobile phone is among the items stolen has risen from 25 per cent. in 1999–2000 to 50 per cent. in 2001–02. In January this year, the police estimate that 31 per cent. of all robberies and snatch thefts in London targeted mobile phones alone, while 20 per cent. involved a mobile phone as well as other items, so 51 per cent. of all street crime in London in that month involved a mobile phone.

As we all know, the police in London and other major cities, where most street robberies take place, are clamping down on street crime. They are tackling mobile phone theft, with the support of the other criminal justice agencies, local authorities, schools and employment services.

One strand of that work has been to find ways of reducing the number of mobile phones stolen. In January 2001, we set up a steering group with the police and the mobile phone industry to consider the practical measures that needed to be taken. Significant progress has been made, especially with the network providers Vodafone, 02, T-Mobile, Orange and Virgin. Following extensive discussions throughout last year, and prompted by the evidence of the scale of the problem in the report to which I referred, Vodafone and 02, which were previously not able to bar handsets on their own networks, have now invested in the technology needed to do so.

The Bill has my full support and, I am pretty sure, that of my party. However, its whole effect is to stop the re-programming of the international mobile equipment identity, or IMEI number, and that will be effective only if the companies can disable the handset. How convinced is the Minister that Vodafone and 02 will have not only the hardware but the software in place by September, as set out in the explanatory notes, rather than later, in 2003, which would negate the whole point of the Bill?

I have of course been in contact with the operator companies throughout the past year, and my officials work with them through the standing group that we set up to tackle mobile phone theft, and my understanding as of today—it is the best information that I can give the House—is that, by the end of August, each of the five main operators will be able to bar stolen handsets on their own network.

The next stage beyond that is to prevent the stolen phone from being used on one of the other major networks, and the second part of the agreement that we have reached with the operators is that they will create a central equipment identity register, which will enable each of them to bar the use of stolen mobiles across all the networks. That decision was announced in February 2002, and we have the industry's assurance that it is on course for implementation of the shared database in September 2002. I have no reason to doubt that the target date will be met.

I totally accept what the Minister says, and only time will tell whether his confidence is justified. If a phone is stolen and then exported, will there be a similar sharing of databases with other global system for mobiles—GSM—operators elsewhere in the world, because if not, all that will happen is that the phones will be usable everywhere but here?

I am anticipating some remarks that I shall make in due course, but in Europe, where the bulk of the other GSM operators are, our initiatives are being recognised as setting best practice standards for the whole region. We are considering how we should follow up in Europe the initiatives taken here. I cannot claim that everything is in place in Europe to mimic what we are doing here, but what we have achieved with the operators here has been noted as best practice. We shall continue to press on the matter. I shall shortly say something about the security of the phones themselves.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the export of phones. He is right to say that wider international action will help to tackle the problem. Although there is undoubtedly some theft for export, that is clearly a more complicated transaction than the simple theft and re-use of a mobile phone. I cannot claim that the Bill totally closes off the export route, but it will have a significant impact on the theft of phones for domestic use.

Clearly, if the technology exists to bar a mobile phone, irrespective of its keeping its original IMEI number, it will not be able to be used. The Bill is aimed at criminalising the re-programming of the telephone, but if the technology exists for such re-programming to continue to be done on the black market—if people are willing to risk the penalties—it will be possible to continue to use it with a new number.

That is self-evident, I suppose. With the current generation of phones, we cannot make re-programming physically impossible. That is why we continue to press the industry, and especially the manufacturers, with the support of the operators, to make phones themselves more secure and more difficult to re-programme. Given that there is a fairly rapid replacement rate of the stock of mobile phones—fashions and designs change—we can look forward to a new generation of phones that are more secure. I believe that criminalising the act of re-programming, with tough but justified sentences, as proposed in the Bill, will help to make a significant impact on the problem.

We all know that there is no magic bullet that will instantly solve the problem, and we are pursuing other measures, educating mobile phone users and persuading schools to discourage pupils from taking their phones to school. All those measures have a role to play, but the Bill is a significant part of the process.

From September, customers who have their mobile phone stolen will be able to ring their network and get it disabled, just as they can ring their bank and cancel a stolen credit card. We have also worked with the industry and the police on promoting greater awareness of security and personal safety, and there is much more information on phone operators' and retailers' websites. The Government have issued 5 million crime prevention leaflets on avoiding mobile phone theft as part of the safer streets campaign.

In London, for example, the Metropolitan police have marked thousands of mobile phones with a permanent ultra-violet property code, making them instantly identifiable if they are stolen and subsequently recovered. In Birmingham, the police and youth offending teams and Victim Support are focusing on mobile phone security and crime prevention presentations, which they are delivering to all secondary school assemblies.

Hon. Members asked about wider issues. We are working with colleagues in Europe and discussing possible cross-boundary solutions, building on the good practice developed in the UK, because we want to prevent stolen phones from being used in other countries, too, so as to remove incentives for illegal export.

The Bill is specifically designed to complement the handset blocking measures taken by the mobile phone operators. Phones are identified and disabled by reference to a serial number on each handset, known as the international mobile equipment identity, or IMEI number—a 15-digit number both programmed into the handset and visible on its body. The number appears on the records of the network providers each time the phone is used. The operators' handset barring system works by reference to the IMEI number, so barring handsets in that way will prevent thieves from being able to use the phones that they steal, and if they cannot be used, they cannot be sold on. That, in itself, should act as a deterrent to mobile phone theft.

However, barring a handset is not fully effective if the IMEI number itself is changed. Changing the number makes it impossible for the operators to track and disable a handset, and that is what we believe is happening. A tracking exercise that operators have undertaken with the police has shown that the IMEI number of as many as 75 out of 100 stolen phones could not be traced on any of the UK networks' records. We can make a reasonable guess that these phones were not thrown away, but were re-programmed and were therefore untraceable. However, I accept that some were sent overseas to emerging markets.

Another indication of the extent of the re-programming problem was revealed last July when BT Cellnet—now 02—estimated that, potentially, the IMEI number of 1.5 million phones on that network had been changed from the manufactured number. Those who were re-programming mobile phones used duplicate IMEI numbers that they knew would work on the network. The most duplicated number on the BT Cellnet network had been copied more than 9,000 times.

Has the Minister discussed with major telephone operators the introduction of a system through which the IMEI number is matched with the telephone number? Such a system is technically possible, and if it were adopted the duplication of an existing and correct IMEI number would not work, because it would not match up with the recognised phone number on the SIM card that is inserted in a GSM telephone.

We have looked at various technical arrangements, and the problem with that solution is that it is not quite as straightforward as the hon. Gentleman suggests. All simple mechanisms that cannot be got round have been examined in detail by the industry, and by the consultants whom we have retained to advise us independently on these matters. The existence of so many duplicate IMEI numbers may well be a by-product of the particular software, often written by hackers, that is used for re-programming phones in the same place. Such software may inadvertently create the same IMEI number.

It is relatively cheap and easy to change the IMEI number of a mobile phone—all that is needed is the relevant software to re-programme the handset, a computer and a cable. The software is freely available; it may be bought, or downloaded from the internet. A kit can be bought for under £150. The Metropolitan police say that stolen and re-programmed phones can be sold for about half their retail price—up to about £100. Given the number of stolen phones and the estimated number of re-programmed ones, it is clear that the re-programming of stolen phones has the potential to produce large-scale criminal profits. At the moment, it is completely legal to re-programme a mobile phone. Re-programming services are lawfully offered and advertised by independent retail outlets, market stalls, car boot sales and internet companies, despite the fact that no legitimate reason exists for changing the number.

On the next stage in the process, to which I have referred, new international security standards that came into force on 1 June state that the IMEI number should not be changed, and should be resistant to change. I am pleased to say that manufacturers are now playing more of their part in the fight against mobile phone crime by hardening the IMEI numbers on their new phones, in compliance with the new standards. That addresses the problem at source. We are also meeting manufacturers to discuss other measures that they can take to enhance the security of their products. However, as I said, at the moment the IMEI numbers of phones already on the market can be changed, and that is the issue that the Bill seeks to address.

In February, we made clear our intention to introduce the Bill at the earliest opportunity. It will create a new criminal offence: the unauthorised re-programming of mobile phone handsets. Specifically, it will be an offence to change, or to interfere with, the operation of a phone's unique identifier—the IMEI number. The Bill will also create linked offences of possessing, supplying or offering to supply equipment for that purpose. It will be an offence to he in possession of equipment with the intention of unauthorised re-programming.

There will be occasions when the manufacturer of a mobile phone will need to change the IMEI number. No offence is committed if the change is made by the manufacturer, or with their written consent. The new "either way" offences of changing, or interfering with, the unique identifier of mobile phones without authorisation, and of possessing or supplying the equipment for that purpose, will carry a maximum penalty on indictment of five years' imprisonment, or an unlimited fine, or both. In the magistrates courts, an offender may be punished with six months' imprisonment, or a fine of up to £5,000, or both. The offence will be an arrestable offence under the provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The penalty for the new offence is in line with those for the various offences of obtaining telecommunications services dishonestly, as provided for in the recently amended Telecommunications Act 1984.

We accept that these penalties are severe, but I believe that they are fully justified. A strong deterrent is needed for those who, in some cases, are hardened criminals engaged in several other criminal activities. However, such a deterrent is also necessary in the context of the wider street crime problem, which has certainly been fuelled by rise in mobile phone theft.