Families send angry letter to Defence Minister
Al Carns MP,
Minister for Veterans and People,
Ministry of Defence,
Whitehall,
London,
SW1A 2HB
13th September, 2025
Dear Minister,
We understand from your recent letter to Adrian Ramsay MP concerning the Chinook Justice Campaign that you are planning a meeting with Members who have contacted you about our campaign, during which officials will brief them on the crash and subsequent reviews. We find it profoundly distressing and disrespectful that after refusing to meet with us—the families of those who died serving their country—you have now decided to meet our elected representatives without us present, presumably only because of the public support that we have generated.
To hide behind litigation as a reason not to meet us is not only evasive, it is disingenuous. If you are unable to comment due to potential legal action, how is it acceptable for you to engage with our MPs to influence their understanding of this matter? We can only interpret this as an attempt to orchestrate a public relations campaign against us while denying us a voice and a face-to-face meeting, which we have requested for more than a year.
Your repeated promises of transparency and candour ring hollow. Your tributes to those who serve are rendered meaningless when you deny basic accountability to the loved ones they left behind. We are angry, and we are determined to continue our fight for justice.
You have fundamentally misrepresented the aims of our campaign. You persist in deliberate deflection by claiming that a public inquiry would not bring certainty about the causes of the crash. We are not demanding a re-examination of the cause of the crash. We are asking for an inquiry into the circumstances that led to the decision to place 29 people aboard an unairworthy aircraft that Ministry of Defence pilots and test engineers at Boscombe Down described as “positively dangerous,” with known fatal flaws in its software.
The helicopter was declared “not to be relied upon in any way whatsoever.” These warnings are not in dispute. Moreover, the Mark 2 at Boscombe Down was grounded. Why were the most experienced test engineers not allowed to fly it, but our loved ones were allowed on board the following day?
You continue to cite the existence of six prior inquiries. However, none of these ever addressed the central issue of airworthiness in any detail or examined the decision-making that led to our loved ones being placed aboard an unsafe aircraft. None of these investigations had access to all the evidence. None had the legal authority to compel testimony. Crucial documents were withheld, including, but not limited to, those documents which have been sealed for a century. The focus of these inquiries was narrowly limited to the disgraceful and flawed verdict of gross negligence placed on two deceased pilots with exemplary records. Only an independent judge-led inquiry will have the power to compel all evidence and documents and ensure they are finally and properly considered independently.
Even your predecessors – including those who chaired and commissioned some of these reviews have publicly acknowledged that they were gravely misled or have suggested that a cover-up occurred within the Ministry of Defence.
Minister, you have the benefit of knowledge about the circumstances of the crash which your predecessors did not. History will judge you harshly for not seizing this opportunity to do the right thing. You can ensure that justice is done, and that accountability is taken.
Please honour the memory of those who died and show compassion to the families they left behind. We are not going away. We will not be silenced. We will not accept further gaslighting.
We are copying this letter to all MPs who have written to you on our behalf, and we sincerely hope that they will insist that you grant us the courtesy of being invited to attend the meeting and any future discussions.
Yours sincerely,
The Families of the Chinook Justice Campaign