A House of Lords report which said the RAF was wrong to blame two Chinook pilots for a crash which claimed 29 lives has not been accepted by the UK Government.

The Ministry of Defence said it "notes the committee's report, but does not accept its conclusion" - a position backed by Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.

But the decision, which was revealed in statements in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, has been condemned by campaigners.

Helicopter pilots Jonathan Tapper and Rick Cook were branded negligent by an official board of inquiry following the 1994 crash on the Mull of Kintyre.

The helicopter came down in Scotland

That finding has been the subject of much controversy and there have been allegations that the crash may have been caused by technical problems.

However, on Monday, junior defence minister Lord Bach told the Lords "the only realistic explanation" for the disaster was the finding of the pilots' negligence by the reviewing officers of the RAF board of inquiry.

He said: "We can deduce that at some point the aircraft entered cloud - which the crew had been warned to expect - well below safety altitude.

"We have agonised over whether there was some way that we could exonerate the pilots posthumously. But on the basis of all the evidence I am unable to do so."

His statement was repeated in the House of Commons later by Mr Hoon.

Lords debate

Mike Tapper, Flight Lieutenant Tapper's father, described the government's stance as "pathetic" and vowed to continue the campaign to clear the pilots' names.

He said: "It goes forth. It goes forth to a debate in the House of Lords this October.

"We're not going to give up and we shall win."

Mr Hoon's announcement also came in for criticism from MPs.

Their failure has led to an injustice that this house ought to put right

Menzies Campbell MP

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Menzies Campbell said: "I cannot conceal my disappointment about the nature of the statement he has just made.

"Nothing he has said today has shaken my belief that the board of inquiry, in good faith, made an error of judgement in that it failed to apply the necessary high standard of proof and that their failure has led to an injustice that this house ought to put right."

He also asked why Mr Hoon attached so little weight to the opinions of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was the Tory defence secretary at the time of the crash.

He is calling for his original decision to be overturned.

Mr Rifkind told BBC Radio Scotland that every other inquiry into the disaster had concluded that the finding of gross negligence was "unsafe, unsound and should be withdrawn".

'No other explanation'

"There are only three people who take a different view, two are the retired air marshals who took the original decision and the third is Mr Hoon," he said.

However, Mr Hoon said he did not think Mr Rifkind's views were sufficient reason to overturn the verdict.

And in response to questioning in the Commons, he stressed: "There is no other plausible explanation."

A Lords report was critical of the RAF's findings

The RAF aircraft, with two pilots and two crew, crashed while carrying 25 passengers who were mostly senior intelligence personnel from Northern Ireland.

They were bound for Fort George, near Inverness, having taken off from RAF Aldergrove in Co Antrim.

The RAF's own internal inquiry ruled it was impossible to establish the cause but there were no "human failings".

However, in 1995 the board of inquiry found that the two pilots were guilty of negligence - even though guidelines said that verdict should only be returned when there was "absolutely no doubt whatsoever".

The following year a fatal accident inquiry in Paisley said the cause of the accident was a mystery and the RAF investigation flawed.

The Lords Select Committee report also disagreed with the air marshals and said there was no justification for such a finding.

Negligence can operate either alone or in conjunction with other factors to cause an accident

MoD statement

However, the official response given on Monday said: "The Ministry of Defence remains of the view that the reviewing officers were fully justified in their conclusion and that there was evidence supporting their conclusion to the requisite standard of proof.

"No investigation into a serious accident can ever answer every question with cast-iron certainty.

"Negligence can operate either alone or in conjunction with other factors to cause an accident.

"In a case where there were deceased aircrew, the relevant departmental guidance required the reviewing officers to be in no doubt whatsoever that their negligence was a cause (although not necessarily the sole cause) of the accident.

"In this tragic case, all the known facts point to that one inescapable conclusion."