Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much money his Department spent on developing a Veterans ID Card since 2019.

Development costs prior to April 2019 cannot be disaggregated from wider budgets. The estimated cost of delivering the first phase of the Veterans' ID Card to Service leavers in the period from April 2019 to May 2020 was £376,000. From May 2020, a contract change meant the costs of delivering ID Cards to Service leavers moved from a discrete budget to a core contract; it will take time to obtain accurate figures for the costs incurred by the first phase since May 2020 and I will write to the hon. Member in due course.

Delivery of the second phase of the scheme, to those who left the Services before December 2018, is delayed. The cost of development is entirely within core business and cannot be disaggregated from wider budgets.