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Parachuting: Injuries

Volume 472: debated on Thursday 21 February 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many parachute-related (a) injuries and (b) deaths there were in each of the last 10 years in (i) the Army, (ii) the Royal Navy and (iii) the Royal Air Force. (187004)

The MOD introduced the Central Health and Safety project (CHASP) database in 1997 to collect health and safety incident data in the Department, mostly on duty or on MOD property. Although 65 parachute-related incidents have been recorded for the 10-year period 1997 to 2006 (data for 2007 are not currently available), difficulties with CHASP data collection suggest these are likely to represent an undercount of the true figure and details are unreliable. I am therefore unable to provide a detailed breakdown of these figures, and the instance of parachute related injuries over the last decade.

Details on annual parachute-related deaths in the UK regular armed forces for each year during the 10-year period 1997-2006, are listed in the following table.

Table 1: Parachute related deaths in the UK regular armed forces, by service (number), 1997 to 2006

All

Naval service1

Army

RAF

All

10

1

6

3

1997

0

0

0

0

1998

0

0

0

0

1999

0

0

0

0

2000

2

0

2

0

2001

1

1

0

0

2002

2

0

2

0

2003

2

0

1

1

2004

1

0

0

1

2005

2

0

1

1

2006

0

0

0

0

1 Royal Navy and Royal Marines