Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many (a) Afghan civilian interpreters and (b) other locally employed civilians have submitted injury compensation claims to his Department in the UK in each of the last 10 years.

There have been 31 claims to the Ex-Gratia Medical Payments Scheme in the last 10 years that have been either accepted or are pending. We are working on ways to resolve those pending claims as swiftly as possible.

The 31 claims are broken down as follows:

· There are 20 former interpreters who have an outstanding claim, or who have appealed the original decision not to award them a payment under the Ex-Gratia Medical Payments Scheme. Some of the outstanding claims relate to injuries sustained more than ten years ago.

· Of the 20 former interpreters who have an outstanding claim, three were submitted within the last six months. The remaining 17 are pending more than 12 months.

· Eleven former interpreters who worked directly for HMG in Afghanistan and now reside in the UK have made claims within the last 10 years, which have been settled. Our records show that, of those settled cases, eight claims were made in 2018, one made in 2019 and two made in 2020.

There have been no claims for other locally employed civilians during the last 10 years.