The failure to take disciplinary action against anyone involved in the decision to allow members of a Royal Navy boarding party held hostage by Iran to sell their stories to the media was "unacceptable", MPs have said.
The Commons Defence Committee said that there had been "a catalogue of serious mistakes" which led to the 15 sailors and Royal Marines being given the go-ahead to sell their stories.
The resulting publicity was "deeply damaging to the reputation of the Royal Navy", the committee said, following an incident which it described as a "national embarrassment".
The Royal Navy team was held for 13 days last spring after being seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards following a routine boarding operation in the Gulf off Iraq, only to be released in a fanfare of publicity by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The decision to allow them to sell their stories only compounded the embarrassment of what was seen by many as a national humiliation.
Sailor Arthur Bachelor was widely ridiculed when he admitted that he had cried himself to sleep after the Iranians took his iPod and called him Mr Bean.
An inquiry by former BBC director of news Tony Hall into the media handling of the crisis concluded that no one individual was responsible for the decision and blamed a "collective failure of judgment".
Defence Secretary Des Browne apologised to the House of Commons, but the committee said that this was not enough.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The independent report by Tony Hall looked very closely at whether an individual should be held accountable and concluded that it was a collective failure of judgment or an abstention of judgment rather than a failure of judgment by any one individual.
"The Secretary of State accepted corporate responsibility and apologised to the House."
