Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average length of tour for army personnel serving overseas in combat zones has been in each of the last three years.

The majority of Army personnel deployed to Afghanistan had an average tour length of approximately 180 days, in line with the standard operational tour length.

The Army's policy is that six months is the optimal tour length for an intense operational deployment within a combat zone. Over the past three years, as service in the Afghanistan combat zone was drawn to a close, the standard tour length remained six months. Some personnel were required to serve up to 12 months and some specialist personnel had tours of four months or less.