Armed Forces: Hearing Impairment
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the (a) average, (b) maximum and (c) total cost of claims was for hearing loss in the (i) Army, (ii) Royal Navy, (iii) Royal Marines and (iv) Royal Air Force between March 2003 and the implementation of the Tactical Hearing Protection System in 2015.
Answered by Al Carns
Between March 2003 and 1 April 2015 which was the start of the implementation of the Tactical Hearing Protection System programme the total cost of common law claims for noise-induced hearing loss claims was £110 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.
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