Tessa Munt

The Prime Minister may be aware that in December, for the first time in over three decades, Defence Ministers met the families of those killed in the 1994 RAF Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre. The Ministry of Defence promised “ongoing dialogue” with them. Is he also aware that, despite receiving pages of new evidence presented at that meeting that show the Chinook was not airworthy, the MOD chose not to keep its word and contacted instead the Press Association, saying that no new evidence had been presented about the cause of the crash? The Prime Minister knows, because the families have written to him, as the MOD knows too, that the families are seeking not a public inquiry into the cause of the crash, but to know the reason why their loved ones were placed on board an aircraft which, according to the MOD’s own test pilots and engineers, was described as “positively dangerous”, “unairworthy” and “not to be relied on in any way whatsoever”? Will he agree to meet the families, to rebuild trust and to offer the promised dialogue that the MOD clearly finds so difficult to achieve?