Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what is the (a) average, (b) maximum individual and (c) total cost of claims paid out for hearing loss, broken down by (i) army, (ii) air force, (iii) navy excluding Royal Marines and (iv) Royal Marines since the implementation of the Tactical Hearing Protection System in 2015.

The implementation of the Tactical Hearing Protection System programme took place between April 2015 and September 2016. Since 1 October 2016, the cost of common law claims for noise-induced hearing loss claims was £250 million. This includes damages and claimant legal costs for claims from both Service and Civilian personnel. Further breakdown including by Service is not readily available. Most claims take a long time to settle and payments occur over a number of years. Calculation of an average payout over this period would incur disproportionate cost.

This does not include claims made via the Armed Forces Compensation and War Pension schemes as providing breakdowns would require information from three different data systems to be combined and individual files to be manually reviewed which would incur disproportionate cost.

The majority of hearing loss claims are historic, and allegations cover all noise exposures, from a variety of sources, over a long period of time, both in combat and training. Claimants will have used more than one type of hearing protection. It is not possible to identify if claims relate to the Tactical Hearing Protection System.