HMS Sultan: Thousands of Royal Navy and military veteran ID cards to be made a month after rollout in Gosport

Minister for veterans affairs, Johnny Mercer, said the project will be a success after the first documents were made from the new printers at HMS Sultan in September. Speaking at the FirstLight Cafe Hub on Gosport High Street yesterday, the Conservative politician said everything is working as intended and the scheme will be gradually extended to produce 2.2m cards for former military personnel across the country.

He told The News: “The machine will be printing 10,000 cards a month from January. We’re going through the process and upscaling it every time.

NOW READ: Veterans ID cards to be printed in Gosport

"You can’t just pull the lever and print 2.2m ID cards because you’ll break the system.” Currently, around 70,000 cards have been produced, which includes those given to veterans who had left the armed forces in .

The scheme previously hit snags after it was launched in 2019, which resulted in frequent delays. A further £3m was invested into the scheme, with the goal of eventually producing 50,000 ID cards a month nationally.

Mr Mercer, Conservative MP for Plymouth Long Moor, said there is still a lot of work to be done. He added: “There was a retrospective digital verification process, so it is working after we did the first lot at HMS Sultan.

"There are plenty of people out there who still don’t have an ID card, so we will keep going down that route until everyone has one.”