Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to his Department's publication, UK armed forces suicide and open verdict deaths: 1984-2015, published on 31 March 2016, what the aggregated five-year average number of deaths recorded as suicide or as an open verdict of Army personnel were in which the deceased have been (a) deployed and (b) not deployed.

Defence Statistics maintains a database of individual deployment records from November 2001. The attached table, therefore, provides an annual breakdown of coroner-confirmed suicides and open verdict deaths among UK Armed Forces personnel as a whole and for each Service in the calendar years 2002 to 2015. It provides a breakdown by those who had previously deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan and those who had not deployed to either operation. The numbers presented may change when outstanding coroner verdicts are returned on deaths that have occurred since 2007.

The Figures presented are the actual number of suicide and open verdict deaths per year rather than five year average numbers. Between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2015 a total of 82 Armed Forces personnel who had deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan were recorded by a coroner as being either a suicide or open verdict death. In the same period, a total of 107 Armed Forces personnel who had not deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan were recorded as a suicide or open verdict death. For context, a total of 634 UK Armed Forces personnel deaths as a result of operations in Iraq or Afghanistan and there were a total of 1,395 non-operational UK Armed Forces deaths over the same period.

Suicide rates across the Services show a declining trend since the 1990s, similar to that seen in the UK general population. Rates among the UK Regular Armed Forces were lower than the UK general population¹,² throughout 1984-2015. The male suicide rate in the UK general population in 2014 was 16.8 per 100,000 compared to a UK Armed Forces male Tri-Service rate of 4 per 100,000.

1 Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2012) Suicide Rates in the United Kingdom, 2006 to 2010

² Suicides in the United Kingdom 2013 Registrations, release 4 February 2016, ONS.