The British Parachute Association and its ghost directorship's evasion of Health and Safety regulations over the years is well-known, as is the complicity of senior Civil Aviation Authority officials. But when the CAA's de facto parachuting regulator Tony Butler of the BPA –– now trading as British Skydiving –– described the Health and Safety Executive as "a danger" in an official BPA/BS document last February, observers wondered if the Association's longtime ghost supremo was losing the plot.
 |
CAA-designated regulator Tony Butler: HSE "a danger".
|
 |
Tony Butler flipping the finger
|
Butler has admitted to involvement in BPA investigations into more than fifty deaths during his time as an employee of BPA Ltd. Some BPA insiders suggest the death toll is more than sixty. As BPA Ltd's accounts show, the firm's average annual safety-related spending is around £5,000 or less.
Prior to assuming the role of Chief Operating Officer, Butler was the BPA's National Safety Officer. He has always avoiding being a director of BPA Ltd, no doubt believing that this will enable him to evade responsibility for the firm's numerous questionable activities.
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, a status that is in itself of questionable legality because a quango like the CAA lacks the ministerial power required to create a quango. Don Canard obtained a comment from CAA Safety Director Richard Bishton but we feel that readers should see Bishton's entire response to Mr Canard.
From: Rob Bishton
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 19:53
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: BPA Watch
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
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.". Mr Bishton's 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 and that he and his directorial colleagues know it. However, it also came across as a rather hollow rejection of
regulatory responsibility.
 |
CAA Safety Director Rob Bishton
|
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 but 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 at 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 much of
this pre-dated his time at the CAA, he was certainly in post alongside his
mentor CAA CEO Richard Moriarty
when the CAA-BPA Exposition was superseded by a new CAA-British Skydiving
Exposition in 2021. Both the BPA ghost
directorship and their counterparts at the CAA are remarkably reluctant to show anyone this document.
Bishton states that: "The CAA is primarily funded based on cost recovery
from the industry we regulate thereby minimising any impact to the taxpaying
public, who we seek to protect.". However, the CAA's continuing failure to collect appropriate annual and other fees from BPA Ltd since 1996 is widely seen as enabling the allegedly not-for-profit amateur sporting association to amass a slush fund containing more
than £3 million.
This has been subsidised by the taxpayers whom Bishton claims the CAA is protecting and by other fee-payers in the aviation industry who also subsidise the significant shortfalls in CAA charges to the BPA for regulation. Is this the "cost recovery from industry" to which Bishton refers?
Bishton was certainly in post when the highly dubious CAP 660 governing sports parachuting in the UK was revised in 2020. The revision was pushed through without full consultation. Bishton failed to use this opportunity to render CAP 660 more compliant with Health and Safety legislation. BPA/BS, on the other hand, used the revision to advance and consolidate its illegal and lucrative monopoly on parachuting in the UK with no objections from CAP 660's co-author, the CAA.
Bishton and other CAA officials were in post when fatalities and injuries occurred on the BPA/BS watch. Bishton protests that he and his colleagues inherited the BPA/BS situation and its baggage. This is true but it is just as true that none of them acted to rectify matters. On the contrary, they appear to have perpetuated the CAA's blatant aiding and abetting of BPA/BS and its various illegal activities, some of which are now the subject of a multi-million pound lawsuit brought by the PTO Association.
Is it time for a Government Enquiry into the CAA-BPA relationship with its numerous failures, illegal activities and shocking death and injury toll and the fitness of the CAA and its mini-me quango BPA/BS to regulate parachuting?
Roman Kandells
