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21 July 2009 : Column 1182W—continued
Armed Forces: Detainees
Adam Price: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the names are of all detainees who have died in the custody of UK forces in each year since 2001; and what the (a) date and (b) cause of death was in each case. [260499]
Mr. Bob Ainsworth [holding answer 3 March 2009]: The following table lists the detainees that have died while within the custody of the UK in Iraq. Where known, the official cause of death is included. However, burial is often within 24 hours in accordance with religious custom, preventing a post mortem from occurring.
| Operation T elic | ||
| Date of death | Name of deceased | Post Mortem Cause of Death |
Those Afghans involved in engagements with coalition or Afghan forces who died within a UK facility in Afghanistan from the wounds they sustained in these engagements are listed in the following table. Despite our best efforts, these eight individuals did not survive what were life-threatening injuries. No detainees have died while in a UK detention facility in Afghanistan.
| Operation H errick | ||
| Date of death | Name of deceased | Post Mortem Cause of Death |
To the best of our knowledge this is a complete record. My predecessor's statement to the House on 26 February reported on detention records in Afghanistan since the deployment of Task Force Helmand in July 2006 and on detention records in Iraq from 15 December 2003 onwards. Most of the fatalities listed above for Iraq occurred before 15 December and so were not covered in that statement. It is also possible that incidents that occurred before 15 December 2003 in Iraq are not captured in our records.
Armed Forces: Discharges
Willie Rennie: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many members of the armed forces retired from front line operational duties for reasons of ill health in each year since 1997. [283342]
Mr. Kevan Jones:
The single services record the numbers of personnel who are at any one time "unfit for task" or
"unable to deploy", although their figures do not distinguish between the majority who are temporarily non-deployable and the minority for whom this is a permanent diagnosis. Details of the numbers of personnel "fit for task" and "fit to deploy" in each quarter since 2006 were given in my answers to the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) on 20 and 22 January 2009, Official Report, columns 1262-64W and 1664-66W, and to the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) on 28 April 2009, Official Report, column 1156W.
The numbers of personnel in these categories will be constantly changing and the majority of armed forces personnel who for medical reasons become temporarily unfit to deploy to front line duties will subsequently recover and return to full fitness. In a relatively small number of cases, their injury or condition may mean that they become permanently unable to deploy. Reasons for this are various, but might include a serious permanent injury (physical or mental) or because during service they develop a medical condition that is incompatible with front line duties.
The majority of those personnel who fall into the category of medically "not fully fit" remain fit enough to work in some capacity and therefore continue to make a contribution to operational effectiveness, often within theatres of operation.
Service personnel with medical conditions or fitness issues which affect their ability to perform their duties will generally be referred to a medical board for a medical examination and review of their medical grading. In clear-cut cases where the individual's fitness falls below the service employment and retention standards, the board will recommend a medical discharge without further delay. In many cases however, the patient will first be downgraded, to allow for treatment, recovery and rehabilitation. For personnel who do not make a total recovery, the board may recommend the patient is retained as permanently downgraded with limited duties, or they may recommend a medical discharge. The numbers of service personnel medically discharged during the period 1997 to 2008 are shown in the following table:
| Year of medical discharge | Naval Service (Royal Navy and Royal Marines) | Army | RAF |
Armed Forces: Health Services
Dr. Fox: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the (a) average, ( b) shortest and (c) longest period of time is for newly trained medical officers to be allocated to postings in the latest period for which figures are available. [280826]
Mr. Kevan Jones: The arrangements in place for the three services are as follows.
All newly qualified military doctors have to undertake two years of foundation training after qualifying from medical school. They then have to complete the course for new entry officers relevant to their particular service, normally six months for the Royal Navy and Army, five months for the Royal Air Force.
In the case of the Royal Navy and the Army, these courses are followed by assignments to ships, Royal Marine commando units, medical regiments, Field Army units or medical centres. RN Medical Officers appointed to submarines undertake a further six months of submarine specific training. In the RAF officers are assigned after the new entry course to GP vocational training, specialist hospital training or to supervised practice in an RAF medical centre.
The period of time from the start of foundation training until initial posting into either a service delivery appointment or, in the case of the RAF, specialty training, can thus be expressed as follows.
| Months | |||
| Shortest period | Longest period | Average period | |
Armed Forces: Helicopters
Dr. Fox: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the (a) required and (b) actual number of training instructors for each helicopter type was in each of the last five years. [284526]
Bill Rammell: Qualified Helicopter Instructors (QHIs) are taught at RAF Shawbury by the tri-service Central Flying School (Helicopters).
The current requirement and actual number of armed forces QHIs are provided in the following table.
| Helicopter Type | Required number of instructors | Actual number of instructors |
Historical figures are not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
The figures provided are the required establishment and the available strength to fulfil the task, and represent flying instructors in current flying instructional positions of all ranks. To avoid double-counting, each instructor is shown only once against a single type, but 13 QHIs instruct on more than one aircraft type, and in this
sense the table understates the availability of instructors by type. In addition, the figures in the table do not include those who previously qualified as instructors but are currently employed in other, non-instructor, Defence posts as part of their career development.
Since the answer given by the then Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr. Ingram) to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) on 29 March 2006, Official Report, column 1004W, the number of Apache QHIs has almost doubled. However, the 2009 establishment figure has been raised recently from 35 to 40 to increase training capacity.
Required and actual numbers will both vary with time due to many factors including operational requirements, the introduction of newly trained instructors on completion of training courses at set times during the year, injuries, and service leavers. Differences between required figures and actual figures also reflect the time taken to train an instructor on new aircraft types, such as Merlin.
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