Read Mick Smith's defence blog on why Des Browne misled Parliament

New evidence emerged this weekend that the RAF’s Nimrod spy planes are unsafe to fly, despite the assurances of Des Browne, the defence secretary, to both parliament and the public that they are airworthy.

In a letter to an MP last week, Browne admitted that 30 faults on the Nimrod’s fuel systems, which must be fixed to make the aircraft safe, are still not rectified.

Problems with fuel were blamed for the loss of a Nimrod over Afghanistan in 2006 with the death of 14 servicemen. A series of articles in The Sunday Times first uncovered the extent of the faults and revealed that, despite Browne’s claims, the aircraft could not be deemed safe.

On Friday, in his damning verdict at the inquest into the crew-men’s deaths, Andrew Walker, assistant deputy coroner for Oxford, called for the fleet to be grounded until it was safe.

Last week’s letter was written by Browne to Angus Robertson, the Scottish National party leader at Westminster. It directly contradicts the defence secretary’s assurances to parliament last December that the Nimrods were safe, a claim he repeated on Friday after Walker’s verdict.

Browne’s deputy, Bob Ainsworth, admitted last week in a letter to the Conservative defence spokesman, Liam Fox, that there had been at least 111 fuel leaks since Nimrod XV230 exploded over Afghanistan in September 2006. Attempts to clarify the number of faults in the fuel system were being hampered by corruption of the database at the aircraft’s base at RAF Kinloss, in Morayshire, Ainsworth said.

Shona Beattie, the wife of Flight Sergeant Stephen Beattie, who was 42 when he was killed, said this weekend that she held the Ministry of Defence responsible for the loss of her husband and that its “casual attitude to safety was catastrophic”.

Beattie, 43, from Elgin, who has been left to bring up two children, Bethany, 13, and Cameron, 11, on her own, said her husband had expressed concern before the crash. “Steve said, ‘Shona, there’s something just not right here’,” she said. “They were always going to take off on a flight and it was always being delayed because something was wrong. He was very concerned.”

Opposition parties have accused Browne of misleading MPs and demanded he should return to the Commons immediately after this week’s recess to explain the true position.

Robertson, MP for Moray, which includes Kinloss, the base for the 15-strong Nimrod fleet, said he felt “totally misled” by Browne’s claim to MPs that the aircraft were safe. “The secretary of state has confirmed to me in writing that they have not required all the safety recommendations to be implemented,” Robertson said. “This is a scandalous state of affairs.”

Fox said there were “too many inconsistencies” and Browne must make a statement to parliament. He had written to James Arbuthnot, chairman of the defence select committee, asking him to investigate the safety of the Nimrod fleet.

The inquest heard that leaking fuel led Nimrod XV230 to explode in a fireball. It was the greatest loss of life in one incident for the armed forces since the Falklands conflict in 1982.

Browne assured MPs in December the aircraft was safe, citing a report by QinetiQ, the defence consultancy. The report, however, said the aircraft would not be fully safe until its 30 recommendations were carried out. All but one of these related to a failure to implement mandatory airworthiness regulations.

The inquest heard last week that, if the risk of something going wrong on a plane is only “tolerable”, MoD rules stipulate that it must be further reduced to make it “as low as reasonably practicable” (Alarp) before the plane can be declared safe. The QinetiQ report cited by Browne as showing the aircraft was safe in fact found it was only “tolerably safe” but, because of the 30 problems, not Alarp.

Of the 30 recommendations, 21 have been accepted by the MoD and are still being implemented. Six relate to air-to-air refuelling, which is no longer done with Nimrods. Three more are still being considered.

Group Captain Colin Hickman, who is in charge of the safety of the Nimrod fleet, admitted to the coroner that the remaining Nimrods were not Alarp and would not be so until the end of this year. Asked if this process could be speeded up, Hickman replied: “No, it is driven by resources.”

Walker said the fleet should be grounded “until the Alarp standards are met”, adding: “This cavalier approach to safety must come to an end.”

It is a view shared by the more than 50 relatives of the dead who crowded into Oxford’s Old Assizes building each day to hear the evidence. They were unanimous in criticising the MoD.

Beattie said she was driving home with the children when a friend phoned to say a Nimrod had gone down: “I was trying to phone Steve to check he was all right,” she said. Soon after she got home, she saw two men in RAF uniform through the glass of the front door. “I knew immediately. I screamed. I wouldn’t open the door to them.”

Beattie is determined to bring her children up as their father would have wanted. “You grow together as a couple and you want to see your children grow up together,” she said. “It’s all been robbed from him, and their lives have been robbed, too. He should never have died.”

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