HC Deb 01 February 1996 vol 270 cc849-50W
Mr. George

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many serving military personnel have received advanced language training within the responsibility of his Department in each of the last 10 years; and if he will indicate the figures for each language taught. [12817]

Mr. Soames

The information requested for the last 10 years is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The figures provided are for the financial years 1993–94, 1994–95 and the programmed figures for 1995–96. They relate to advanced—previously linguist—and interpreter level courses delivered by the Defence school of languages at Beaconsfield, Salmond house training centre in Germany as well as individual external language training.

a. Defence School of Languages

RUSSIAN

  • FY 1995–96: 29
  • FY 1994–95: 29
  • FY 1993–94: 34
  • ARABIC
  • FY 1995–96: 27
  • FY 1994–95: 32
  • FY 1993–94: 18

b. Salmond House Training Centre

GERMAN

  • FY 1995–96: 21
  • FY 1994–95: 19
  • FY 1993–94: 13

c. Individual Language Training

  • FY 1995–96: 74
  • FY 1994–95: 81
  • FY 1993–94: 48

Training was carried out in the following languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese—Mandarin—Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Flemish, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Nepali, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Slovak, Turkish and Ukranian.