To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the (a) average and (b) longest delay in payment was to those entitled to payment under the compensation scheme for former civilian prisoners of the Japanese in the Second World War between authorisation of payment by the Veterans Agency and payment over the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement. (186104)

The information is not held in the format requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. However, we have manually tracked five payments made since October 2007; the manual processing time was five days, although one payment took 12 days to process.

The Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA) are not aware of any claimant reporting a payment failing to arrive or reporting undue delays in payment.