Armed Forces: Compensation
(asked on 24th March 2025) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the total cost to the public purse was of personal injury compensation payments in each year from 2014-15 to 2023-24 broken down by (a) type of injury, (b) arm/service, (c) gender, (d) number of claimants, (e) total cost and (f) minimum/maximum payout.
The tables below show the total amounts paid out under the War Pensions Scheme (WPS) and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) by financial year.
Providing the further breakdowns would require information from three different data systems to be combined and individual files to be manually reviewed meaning it could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.
Table 1 below provides the total compensation expenditure under the AFCS from 1 April 2014 to the 31 March 2024 by financial year.
Allowance Type | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
Total Compensation Payable (£'000,000) | 72.9 | 80.7 | 80.6 | 87.8 | 89.8 | 90.0 | 84.3 | 104.0 | 127.9 | 147.8 |
Lump Sum Payments | 46.7 | 50.6 | 44.2 | 46.0 | 43.3 | 38.7 | 30.1 | 38.6 | 49.3 | 54.7 |
Guaranteed Income Payments | 19.4 | 23.2 | 27.9 | 33.5 | 36.9 | 41.2 | 44.6 | 55.2 | 67.2 | 76.6 |
Survivors' Guaranteed Income Payments | 6.8 | 7.0 | 8.5 | 8.3 | 9.6 | 10.1 | 9.6 | 10.2 | 11.4 | 16.5 |
Table 2 below provides the total compensation expenditure under the WPS from 1 April 2014 to the 31 March 2024 by financial year.
Allowance Type | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
Total Compensation Payable (£'000,000) | 837.6 | 794.8 | 764.8 | 723.2 | 697.3 | 680.3 | 652.4 | 622.5 | 606.5 | 633.4 |
Disablement Pensioners | 569.4 | 548.7 | 541.2 | 517 | 506.8 | 501.2 | 482.1 | 462.1 | 462 | 505.6 |
War Widow(er)s | 268.3 | 246 | 223.6 | 206.2 | 190.5 | 179.2 | 170.3 | 160.5 | 144.6 | 127.8 |
Figures presented in these tables include accrued expenditure where a claim was awarded in the last few days but was processed and paid after year end. Therefore, expenditure figures may differ to the amount of actual monies paid out in the financial year.
Figures have been rounded to the nearest £100,000. Therefore, totals and sub-totals may not equal the sum of their parts.