The Ministry of Defence had to pay over £84 million in compensation claims in 2008. A Royal Navy surgen has received £3.6 million due to spinal injuries after a helicopter accident in Northern Ireland.

The highest single claim was paid to a Royal Navy surgeon who received £3.6 million for severe spinal injuries following a helicopter crash during an exercise in Northern Ireland.
The largest amount paid to a British civilian was £770,000 to an elderly victim of asbestos poisoning from working in Portsmouth naval dockyard. 

With fighting intensifying in Afghanistan the number of claims received from locals whose property had been damaged has more than doubled to 2120 in the last year.

Of these, 736 were settled but more than a thousand were "denied or repudiated".

"The increase in number of claims reflects a significant increase in the number of rural, subsistence farmers claiming for damage to crops during routine patrolling in areas with poor, if any, roads and tracks," said the MoD Claims Report for the last financial year.

The report admitted that because civil claims in Helmand "has the potential to affect the way the population feels" towards British troops, more were being agreed. The report said paying out has a direct bearing on casualty numbers, so a "compromise of the process has evolved which will assist "civil effect" and contribute to the effort in winning the consent of the local population".

But despite the number of claims increasing the amount dropped sharply from £1.3 million two years ago to £450,000 this year.

The amount paid in compensation and legal costs to Iraqi civilians has increased significantly largely as a result of an incident in which Iraqis were paid £5 million as a result of torture and abuse while held in detention by British Forces. The case centres around the death of the hotel receptionist Baha Mousa while in custody of British troops in a case which is about to be examined by a public inquiry.

The number of public liability claims more than doubled to £11 million for members of the public who have been injured while on MoD property or participating in assault course events. The figure also includes compensation to personnel who have had their belongings damaged by the poor maintenance of the properties they occupy.

The cost of personal injury claims dropped by about £3 million over the last two years to £29 million.

Final compensation of £3.8 million was paid out to victims of experiments on Servicemen at Porton Down following a long-running legal dispute. Similarly a number of high-value long-running claims were settled for clinical negligence which doubled to £8 million in the last year.