Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they expect the new
Emergency Services Network critical communications system to be
fully operational; and what is the latest estimate of the cost.
(Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on
the Order Paper. In so doing, I draw attention to my interests in
the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office () (Con)
My Lords, the Home Office is procuring a new supplier for mobile
radio and data services following Motorola’s withdrawal from ESN.
This means the expected transition to ESN in 2024 and Airwave
shutdown in 2026 cannot now be achieved. A revised business case
will be published this year. This will reflect the impact of
procurement activity and the charge control imposed by the
Competition and Markets Authority on Motorola in 2023.
(Lab)
My Lords, this is pretty poor, is it not? The programme was
originally announced a decade ago. The switchover was supposed to
start in 2017 and be completed by 2019. The original cost was a
mere £6.2 billion; the last estimate—and that is two years out of
date, before Motorola withdrew—was £11.3 billion. Only one
network provider was prepared to bid. The National Audit Office
warned that this is a technology
“not yet proven in real-world conditions”.
It is a system based on a mobile phone network, creating a single
point of failure. Can the Minister tell us—given that the cost
has at least doubled, implementation is at least 14 or 15 years
late, and there is no guarantee that the existing Airwave system
can continue beyond the year after next—if this debacle is not
the fault of his department then whose fault it is and who is
taking responsibility?
(Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord has asked me a large number of
questions. To reassure all noble Lords, there is no reason at all
why Airwave cannot be extended beyond 2030. As for how we got to
where we got, it is worth reminding the House that it was the
Home Office that referred Motorola to the Competition and Markets
Authority in April 2021; that resulted in Motorola leaving the
Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme in December
2022. My noble friend the Chief Whip answered a Question back in
2022 which mentioned the £11.3 billion figure referred to by the
noble Lord. That was for a programme that was supposed to run
between 2015-16 and 2036-37. Unfortunately, any estimates that I
give now would not be comparable in duration or end date; the end
date is now expected to be 2044. However, the CMA charge control
imposed on Motorola will involve a saving to the taxpayer. The
numbers are very much up in the air.
(LD)
My Lords, can the Minister assure us that the Government will
look at the original tendering process to find out exactly why
this went wrong, since it clearly has? As an aside, can the
Government give us an assurance that no one from Fujitsu or its
Horizon programme is let anywhere near it?
(Con)
My Lords, I suppose this could have been spotted earlier, but the
fact is that Motorola’s dual role in it arose as a result of the
company acquiring Airwave at the same time as it was awarded the
contract for ESN, so the Home Office’s options at that point were
limited. We sought to agree measures to protect the delivery of
ESN and, when it became clear that those measures were
insufficient, the Home Office raised its concerns with the
Competition and Markets Authority. As for future suppliers, the
contracts will be awarded later this year, and I shall make sure
that the noble Lord’s concerns are reflected.
(Lab)
My Lords, the Government are supposed to be introducing a new
emergency services network, but, as my noble friend pointed out,
what the Minister has said leaves us all still bewildered about
the actual implementation date. Perhaps he can tell us. The
original date was 2017, but the implementation date is what
everyone wants to know. When is it going to be working? When are
we going to know that we have a new emergency services network?
From what I could see, the Home Office stated that it would be
2029. Is that still correct? In other words, when can we actually
have the new emergency services network promised by the
Government?
(Con)
I obviously cannot answer that question as precisely as the noble
Lord would like. Yes, 2029 is an aspiration, partly because of
the functionality of Airwave, to which I have already referred.
However, some aspects of ESN are already live. Three ESN products
have gone live in the past two years: 4G data connectivity for
vehicles, which is called Connect; push-to-talk and messaging
capability on smartphones, Direct 1 and Direct 2; and a device
that can monitor and assess coverage on the move. Significant
work has gone into the EAS, which is blanket coverage across the
country, while much of the hardware has already been put in
place. The noble Lord draws far too bleak a picture.
(CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest, including having carried out a
review for the Home Office, part of which the Minister has
referred to, which is the recommendation to refer to the
monopolies commission. As he explained, Motorola purchased the
legacy system and was paid around £250 million, while for the new
system that it was about to deliver it would be paid £50 million.
There was no financial incentive to deliver anything, and,
perhaps consequently, it has not.
The only thing that reassures me at the moment is that the
Government are going to look smartly at whether to discriminate
between the radio system and data production. The big problem is
that, nowhere in the world, at pace and at scale, has anyone
shifted a radio system on to a telecommunication system. That is
the fundamental problem. The transmission of data is not the
issue—we do that on our phones all the time—but we probably need
to carry on delivering the radio as it was and separate the data
off. If we continue to try to combine them, I worry that it will
become even more undeliverable than it has been to date.
(Con)
The noble Lord makes a good point and I thank him for his
perspective. He is right that the radio supply over the networks
remains critical. As I understand it—and this answers one of the
earlier questions from the noble Lord, Lord Harris—the technology
is more proven than it was when the PAC last commented on it. It
is being rolled out in other parts of the world; from memory,
Korea is one of the countries where it is being tested. So some
of those aspects at least have been dealt with.
(Lab)
My Lords, I apologise for coming back again, but the Minister is
essentially implying that this just happened—that Motorola came
in and bought Airwave, and these things just happened like that.
But is not the reality that the negotiations were conducted
between highly sophisticated multinational companies that are
used to doing negotiations and a bunch of ingénues on the Home
Office side? It is not surprising that the country has been
ripped off in this way. Does the Minister agree?
(Con)
No, that is a very unfair characterisation. As I said earlier,
Motorola bought Airwave, which could not have been foreseen, and,
therefore, as the noble Lord, , has just pointed out, it
became in effect a monopoly supplier. That is why the Competition
and Markets Authority was involved at the behest of the Home
Office, which did the right thing.
