Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much and what proportion of the £40 million of funding for the transformation programme has been spent on the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme as of 30 September 2022.

The ongoing Transformation Programme to digitise existing paper based processes and create a single customer portal for Veterans aims to introduce automation, process improvements and significantly reduce paper holdings. It will also provide a single view of the claimant with online self-service provision enabling claimants to provide and retrieve information electronically and allow them to securely access details of their entitlement and payments. On current trajectory the first release of the new system is expected in late 2023 with further iterations being released through to late 2024. This will underpin the customer portal, which is being developed concurrently and is also expected for release late 2024.

Payment for this programme is not due until final milestones are completed and as of 30 September no money has been transferred to the contractor for their work to date on the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.