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Ministry of Defence

Answer

Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence of the anti-personnel mines stored by the MoD how many and what percentage of the total were destroyed in each year since 1991. [94663] Mr. Spellar: The UK no longer stores any operational anti-personnel mines. The last of the Army's operational stocks of APMs were destroyed on 22 February this year. The destruction programme for the last of the RAF's operational stocks of APMs--the HB 876 sub-munition for the JP233 weapon system--was completed on 19 October 1999. Available figures for anti-personnel mines destroyed by the UK are shown in the table. _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Designation Year Quantity Total destroyed (%) C3 Elsie 1995-96 374,257 64 1996-97 106,263 18 1998-99 99,788 17 {1}Retained 1,056 Less than 1 581,364 100 Mine and Discharger 1995-96 41,472 3 Barrel Assembly 1995-97 596,664 39 (Ranger) 1998-99 876,960 58 {1}Retained 2,088 -- 1,517,184 100 Mine A/Tk L27A1 1995-96 4 Less than 1 1997-97 4,870 100 4,874 100 Mine A/P HE M86 1993-94 204 100 JP233 1997-98 6 0.4 1998-99 1,385 99.6 1,391 100 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. {1} As permitted under Article 3 of the Ottawa Convention, the UK will continue to retain the minimum necessary numbers of live APMs for training and testing in de-mining techniques. Other, inert, training APMs are not included in these figures.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

94663; 336 c694-5W

Session

1998-99

Subjects

Ammunition Bomb disposal Landmines

Contains statistics

Yes