To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what steps his Department takes to make publicly available information on the number of British (a) casualties and (b) fatalities incurred in (i) Iraq and (ii) Afghanistan since the commencement of operations. (105717)

The MOD is committed to openly publishing statistics on the number of service casualties on operations. Information on casualties and fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan is published on the MOD website:

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FactSheets/OperationsFactsheets

Data are published for Iraq since the commencement of operations in March 2003 and for Afghanistan since 1 January 2006. Work is ongoing to ascertain whether casualty data for Afghanistan pre-2006 are sufficiently robust to enable figures to be published in the same format as for Iraq; I will write to inform the hon. Member when this work is complete. Casualty data on the MOD website are updated on a two weekly basis, two weeks in arrears.

Details of fatalities are released to the media following an incident and updates are made to the website above, which has lists of UK military fatalities from both theatres.