Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many (a) regular (i) soldiers, (ii) sailors and (iii) airmen and (b) reserve (A) soldiers, (B) sailors and (C) airmen by medical category there were in each year since 2010.

There are three Medical Deployability Standard (MDS) categories for the Armed Forces. Medically Fully Deployable (MFD) personnel are those medically fit for duty with no employment limitations. Medically Limited Deployable (MLD) personnel are medically fit for duty with minor employment limitations. MLD personnel may have a medical condition or functional limitation that prevents the meeting of all Medically Fully Deployable (MFD) requirements. Medically Not Deployable (MND) personnel are medically fit for duty with major employment limitations. MND personnel are not fit to deploy on operations but may be deployable on UK-based exercises.

For the numbers of UK Regular Armed Forces and UK Future Reserves 2020 personnel in each MDS category in each year up to 2017, I refer the hon. Member to the answer the previous Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Tobias Ellwood), gave him on 8 November 2017, to Question 110876.

The attached table provides the number and percentage of UK Regular Armed Forces in each MDS category, by Service as at 1 April 2018 and 1 April 2019. These figures include full-time trained and serving personnel against requirement. This was the deployable population.