Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many personnel have been medically discharged from the armed forces due to permanent hearing loss or damage following following involvement in (a) the Afghanistan War from 2001 and (b) Iraq War from 2003.

Between 1 January 2001 and 30 September 2022, a total of 2,170 UK Regular Armed Forces personnel were medically discharged with a principal or contributory cause of hearing loss/damage, of which 1,455 had been previously deployed to either Afghanistan and/or Iraq. The breakdown of the figure is provided below:

1,119 had been deployed to Afghanistan.

839 had been deployed to Iraq.

Personnel may have deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq therefore the breakdown cannot be summed. The medical discharges included in this response cannot be attributed to deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. This means that the hearing loss/damage may not have been sustained when on deployment and the subsequent medical discharge may have occurred a number of years after deployment.