The Isle of Man has come out of a report on the United Kingdom's relationship with the Crown dependencies looking pretty good.

But the same cannot be said of the UK, whose conduct over issues like the collapse of Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander and the Reciprocal Health Agreement is criticised.

The report has been produced by the House of Commons Justice Committee, chaired by the Liberal Democrat MP Sir Alan Beith.

Edward Oldham reports (text, below, from attached audio file):

In its conclusion about the UK government's handling of the ending of the agreement, the report says it was: 'Simply unacceptable for the Isle of Man to be told, without warning, at a meeting on July 1, 2008 that the Reciprocal Health Agreement would be terminated'.

For that it blames the UK Department of Health, but also says the Ministry of Justice failed to intervene and make sure proper procedure was followed - something it's supposed to do as the department which should represent the Island's interests within the UK government.

For example, a Ministry of Justice representative should have been at the meeting.

But that in itself poses another question - shouldn't the Manx government have known this and acted accordingly?