Questions have been raised over ministerial responsibility for the Nimrod MR2 crash which killed 14 UK servicemen.

Former army chiefs have criticised the identification of senior members of the armed forces in an official report into the 2006 crash and questioned whether they should be held responsible for implementing efficiency savings set out by ministers.

The comments, made in a Lords debate on Wednesday, came after defence secretary Bob Ainsworth announced that a new Military Aviation Authority will be established before April next year to regulate military aviation.

Ainsworth also announced that there will be a review of the way contract conditions are set between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and industry. Partnership with industry "does not mean that we can just transfer work to industry - we still have a role to play", he said.

The move follows Charles Haddon-Cave QC's highly critical report into the crash, which he said had been preventable.

He criticised the MoD, BAE Systems and QinetiQ - members of the public private 'integrated project team' responsible for the Nimrod - and specifically named two senior military officers - General Sir Sam Cowan and Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger.

He described a safety review of the ageing Nimrod fleet completed a year earlier as a "lamentable job" that was "riddled with errors" and failed to identify serious design flaws which led to the crash.

Ainsworth announced yesterday that two other officers - Air Commodore George Baber and Wing Commander Michael Eagles, both responsible for the safety review criticised by Haddon-Cave - are under investigation by RAF police.

But Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig of Radley, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, said he greatly regretted that Haddon-Cave "did not consider the role and responsibilities of ministers".

He said failures of government funding led to "more extreme attempts to extract the required pint out of a half-filled pot".

"Where matters of flight safety were concerned... there should not have been presumptions of economies without far more rigorous consideration."

He added: "I also regret that the two senior officers (Cowan and Pledger) charged by ministers to restructure and achieve unrealisable savings should be held so personally to blame for the systemic failure of MoD in setting out a policy they worked to implement."

Lord Ramsbotham, a retired general, said the decision to name the two officers was a "wholly unacceptable and a stain on the Ministry of Defence" which had "damaged respect for the MoD in the armed forces, who now fear that their loyalty similarly may not be returned".

Lord Turncliffe, speaking for ministers, said the MoD had avoided commenting on these individuals and denied that there is a funding problem, as claimed by Lord Craig.

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, defence secretary at the time of the 1998 strategic review which brought together the logistics operations of the Royal Navy, Army and RAF, said he "sincerely believed at the time" that Cowan and Pledger could "without any risk to safety or deficiency achieve a 20 per cent cut of the new logistics organisation over a period of four years".

He added: "I don't even today think that that was a dangerous strategy."

The problem of saving money while maintaining safety standards was discussed in the Commons after Ainsworth's announcement, with  Conservative defence select committee chairman James Arbuthnot warning that the MoD had developed a culture of "ticking boxes".

SNP spokesman Angus Robertson warned that the emphasis was on targets and cost savings at the expense of safety.

Ainsworth said there was "no doubt" that aviation safety had suffered.

"None of us say that we shouldn't be driving for efficiency, everybody wants an efficient service... but safety can't be compromised in that regard."