RFI experts' report

In our posts of 28 April and 03 May, we reported on the difficulties of obtaining a document held by the Department for Transport (DfT) – the joint report of the experts in the 2004 Formal Investigation into the sinking of the trawler Gaul.

On 26 June 2007, in a letter sent to Sandra Gidley MP in response to her similar request, Dr Stephen Ladyman, Minister for Transport at that time, wrote:

“The report referred to in paragraph 8 of the Expert’s Protocol is not in a form that can be easily reproduced or transmitted in its entirety. I would be happy to send you any relevant excerpt if you could submit a more specific request for information.”

One month later, on 26 July 2007, in a letter on the same topic, the DfT takes a different approach:

“The Department has sought advice from the Treasury Solicitor’s office on the status of the Joint Panel of Experts report and has been advised that it is not a public document. It was referred to at the RFI but only the transcripts of the various experts oral evidence were actually placed on the GAUL website.

Furthermore, it is accepted that the material prepared for the RFI was prepared on behalf of the Attorney so strictly the Joint Report is the property of the Attorney.

However, the Department can see no difficulty in providing your naval architect with an opportunity to view the Panel’s report but he should be advised that it is not a public document and it will be provided only on the basis that it remains confidential and the property of the Attorney.“

Questioned further on this subject, the Head of Shipping Policy in the DfT told us that the report in question was so confidential that no copy or reproduction of its contents or of any part of its contents was permitted.

Why cannot the public view a technical document, which was created in the course of a public investigation that cost the taxpayer about £10 mil? Although the public paid for it, the record is now owned by the Attorney General who would not even release copies of parts of the document for research and public interest purposes.

The experts' protocol

In our post of 17 March, we reported on our attempts to obtain two documents held by the Department for Transport (DfT), which are mentioned in the Gaul RFI EXPERTS' PROTOCOL (paragraphs 3, 8 and 9) and which, frankly, should have been published within the final report (as was the case in the MV Derbyshire RFI).
Having failed to lodge a request for these papers via the parliamentary route, on 19 March, I sent THIS EMAIL to the DfT.

Since then, we have managed to obtain a copy of the first document (i.e. the list of “all” possible scenarios for the loss of the Gaul) from the MAIB. (This list looks quite interesting and we intend to comment on it separately, in due course.)

The second document that we would like to obtain, (i.e. the joint report, which gives details of the RFI experts’ consideration of the various loss scenarios that had been put forward during the investigation), the DfT is still not able to provide.

Chased up on this matter, the head of Shipping Policy 4, not too thrilled to hear from us again, said that the Department was now depleted of staff with intimate knowledge of the Gaul affair, so he had had to refer our request to the Treasury Solicitor. The latter, we were told, is now the only person left at the scene, able to guide the DfT in their search for the document in question.

I hope that the joint report – central piece of the £10m investigation - has not been misplaced or mislaid…