A civil servant in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) who suffered back strain after lifting a printer has received a payout of £202,000 – more than three times the sum awarded to the youngest British soldier to be shot and wounded in Iraq.

Private Jamie Cooper, 18, a Royal Green Jackets soldier, was hit twice by mortar rounds in Basra in November 2006. His compensation was just £57,587 even though he lost the use of one leg and a hand and suffered internal injuries.

The disparity, revealed in an MoD annual report, has reignited the controversy about the level of compensation given to soldiers wounded in combat. Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said some of the payments made to soldiers were “completely heartless”.

Cooper’s father, Phil, said: “It’s laughable really, isn’t it. You’ve got guys out there on the front line risking their lives and getting horribly wounded and then you’ve got faceless bureaucrats getting far more for straining their back lifting a printer.

“It’s not just about Jamie. There are all those other Tommy Atkins in the same position. I’d have said I can’t believe it but I can. It doesn’t surprise me any more, it really doesn’t. I’m just so disillusioned by it all. It is despicable.”

The 2006-07 annual report of the MoD Directorate of Safety and Claims also revealed that another civil servant had received £217,000 in compensation for suffering chronic fatigue syndrome and depression.

Another wounded soldier, Lance Corporal Martyn Compton, 24, from Staplehurst, Kent, initially received a settlement of only £98,837.50 after he suffered third-degree burns to 70% of his body in a Taliban rocket attack.

The publicity in his case led the sum to be increased to £163,000 but Alistair Galloway, his former commander who is campaigning on his behalf, said he was “shocked to hear of large payments made to civil servants suffering from back strain”.

The MoD confirmed that payments to civil servants came from the public purse but said that monthly payments to the most disabled soldiers had “the potential to amount to several hundreds of thousands of pounds over a lifetime”.

Read more on this issus at Michael Smith's blog

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