CAA & BPA: GOVERNMENT POLICY?

When Civil Aviation Authority-designated Parachuting Regulator Tony Butler finally expressed the British Parachute Association's well-known aversion to the Heath and Safety Executive and its concerted evasion of HSE regulations over the years in writing last February, some observers wondered if Butler was losing his longtime grip on the BPA, now trading as British Skydiving. 

 

CAA-designated regulator Tony Butler: HSE a "danger".

Butler's surprising outburst came in his response to the Parachute Training Organisation Association's objections to the BPA's dubious insurance practices, which have been scrutinised by BPA Watch. The PTOA responded to Butler by having its legal counsel issue notice of an intended lawsuit focusing on BPA/BS' exploitation of its illegal monopoly to force members to buy insurance at inflated rates.

BPA Watch's Don Canard wrote to CAA CEO Richard Moriarty and CAA Safety Director Rob Bishton to see if they would comment on their designated regulator's express aversion to the Heath and Safety Executive. Moriarty and Bishton could fairly be described as being responsible for Butler and his British Parachute Association's de facto quango status.  Don Canard obtained a comment from CAA Safety Officer Richard Bishton. After some discussion, BPA Watch feels that readers should be able to read Don Canard's entire email exchange with Mr Bishton.

quote/...

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 07:21
Subject: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: <richard.moriarty@caa.co.uk>, <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>

Dear Sirs,

In a letter dated 8.2.2021 to the Parachute Training Organisation Association, your delegated parachuting regulator Tony Butler of the British Parachute Association aka British Skydiving openly expressed in writing for the first time his well-known aversion to the Health and Safety Executive and its regulations.

Mr Butler wrote: "If British Skydiving did not exist, either the CAA would need to take on the role and reproduce what the Association does, at a far higher cost, or there is a danger the HSE would likely carry out the role.".

As, respectively, CEO and Safety Officer of the CAA, would one or both of you give BPA Watch a comment on the record about Mr Butler's extraordinary statement? Do you condone or agree with this hostility to HSE regulations?

We can supply a copy of Mr Butler's letter if necessary.

Regards,

Don Canard for BPA Watch

From: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 10:41
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>, Richard Moriarty <Richard.Moriarty@caa.co.uk>

Good morning Canard

Acknowledging safe receipt on behalf of the Civil Aviation Authority and ensuring you that a colleague will provide you with a substantive response in due course.

Kind regards,

Rob Bishton  

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 19:34
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>

Dear Mr Bishton,

That will be Mr Canard to you. As a taxpayer, I pay your salary and those of your fellow quangocrats. You are the CAA Safety Director and Mr Moriarty is the CEO. Why cannot either or both of you answer my simple question about the anti-HSE statement of your delegated regulator Tony Butler? I am not interested in any comments from your colleagues. I am asking you. You're the executive directors running Butler. Or is Butler running you?

Simple answer please: are YOU prepared to comment or not.

Rob Bishton: Not me, guv!

Don Canard

From: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 19:53
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Cc: Stephen Hillier <Stephen.Hillier@caa.co.uk>, Richard Moriarty <Richard.Moriarty@caa.co.uk>

Mr Canard

The omission of ‘Mr’ was in error. I do apologise. 

Thank you for your email.

Executives of the CAA represent the CAA position and that which reflects government policy. I assure you that you will receive a reply in due course and after due consideration, given much of what is being referred to pre-dates those of us in office at this time. 

The CAA is primarily funded based on cost recovery from the industry we regulate thereby minimising any impact to the tax paying public, who we seek to protect.  

Regards,

 

Rob Bishton

 

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 08:32 Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE To: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk> Cc: <richard.moriarty@caa.co.uk> Dear Mr Bishton, Thanks for the clarification.  We look forward to a further clarification from you both, as the senior CAA decision-makers, of the CAA's position on its regulator's express hostility to the HSE, given the BPA's shocking death and injury toll over the years, during many of which Mr Butler was the firm's National Safety Officer. We do accept that the CAA's relationship with Tony Butler began before you and other current CAA executive directors joined the authority. However, our new article is not talking about the relationship as a whole. We have covered that in some detail already. It covers your designated regulator's extraordinary written outburst about the Health and Safety Executive as well as the impending legal action against BPA Ltd for what amounts to insurance fraud made possible by the illegal monopoly it enjoys, thanks in no small part to CAA complicity. Regards, Don Canard   end quote/…   Richard Moriarty is known for ignoring questions he finds awkward or for tasking subordinates with responding to them, often without adequate or accurate briefings. Rob Bishton's initial response to Don Canard aped his boss' style in declining to comment whilst promising a response from some unspecified 'colleague' at some unspecified point in the future.    Whether this reticence on the part of the two senior executive directors of this increasngly embattled quango is because they are unwilling to comment or because they are incapable of commenting remains to be seen but CAA insiders have said of Mr Bishton that "he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer even if he thinks he is very smart.".    When pushed by Don Canard, Mr Bishton's effective assertion that most of the dubious behaviour associated with the BPA trading as British Skydiving pre-dates the current CAA directorship's time in office amounted to an admission that BPA conduct is indeed dubious. However, it also came across as a rather hollow rejection of regulatory responsibility.    Richard Moriarty joined the CAA as Deputy Chief Executive in 2016 after serving as CEO of the Legal Services Board and was promoted to the post of CEO in May 2018. Rob Bishton joined the CAA in 2014, serving as Head of Flight Operations and on the Safety and Airspace Regulation's senior leadership team. Mr Moriarty appointed Mr Bishton as Director of Safety and Airspace Regulation in November 2019.    Bishton was the CAA's first non-ministerial appointment to the post. Bishton's predecessor, Air Commodore Mark Swan, was appointed in 2008 by Transport Minister Geoff Hoon. Air Commodore Swan had almost thirty years of experience with the RAF as a fast jet pilot and was Director of Operational Capability at the Ministry of Defence when posted to the CAA.    Bishton's LinkedIn CV lists his education as Repton, a private school in Derbyshire. Bishton does not list any graduate or post-graduate educational experience or qualifications. Elsewhere, it transpires that he has been an airline pilot since 1993. From March 2007 to January 2010, Bishton served as Director of Operations of Astraeus Airlines during the firm's final slide towards bankruptcy.    Bishton was then employed by EasyJet, where he was appointed Chief Pilot before being marched out of the firm's offices between two security guards in March 2012. After spending some time on what The Times described as "gardening leave', Bishton was taken on the budget African airline FastJet as Group Operations Director, a job he held for two years before joining the CAA in 2014.     BPA Ltd has been the CAA's de facto parachuting regulator since 1996, when the two organisations drew up an Exposition together. BPA Ltd directors and councillors demanding sight of this Exposition have been subjected to constructive dismissal tactics by the ghost directorship of BPA Ltd, headed by former BPA National Safety Officer Tony Butler, who has no formal qualifications in the field.  While Rob Bishton rightly says that all of this pre-dated his time at the CAA, he was certainly in post alongside his mentor Moriarty when the CAA-BPA Exposition was superseded by a new CAA-British Skydiving Exposition in 2020. Both the BPA ghost directorship and their counterparts at the CAA are remarkably relucant to show anyone this document.  CAA CEO Moriarty: tight-lipped Moriarty and Bishton were in post when the CAP 660 relating to sports parachuting in the United Kingdom was revised in 2020. CAA Oversight Manager Jim Frampton asked several HM Government-trained parachuting specialists to review CAP 660 and to produce a more Health and Safety-compliant version, published as CAP 666.  According to CAA insiders, Jim Frampton was effectively sacked by Bishton and Moriarty, CAP 666 was shelved and CAP 660 remained as non-compliant with Health and Safety legisation and regulations as previously. It also went further than previous editions in advancing and consolidating the illegal BPA monopoly on parachuting in the UK. As for Rob Bishton's statement that: "The CAA is primarily funded based on cost recovery from the industry we regulate thereby minimising any impact to the tax paying public, who we seek to protect.", the CAA's failure to collect appropriate annual fees from BPA Ltd since 1996 is believed to have enabled the allegedly not-for-profit sporting association to amassed a slush fund containing more than £3 million, subsidised by"the tax-paying public" to whom Rob Bishton refers.   However, the most questionable of Rob Bishton's statements to Don Canard of BPA Watch concerns his assertion that the CAA's position –– in relation to BPA/BS and its numerous and well-documented misdeeds, "reflects government policy.".    Do the many documented instances of BPA/BS skulduggery during its time as a CAA-designated regulator and the CAA's obviously complicity in establishing and protecting the lucrative BPA/BS monopoly really reflect government policy? Roman Kandells