Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Vaizey of Didcot
Main Page: Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Vaizey of Didcot's debates with the Home Office
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberThe noble Baroness points out the reason why we need the new system. Airwave is expensive and out of date, and will start to become obsolete towards the end of this decade. It uses old technology and has only voice and slow text-based data services so, yes, that is entirely the aim of the new system.
My Lords, this network programme is much needed and has to be the right solution. As I understand it, one of the benefits of the new programme will be that the emergency services can send out text messages. Those were very useful during Covid and would perhaps have been useful yesterday, during the heatwave. Can my noble friend outline which services will have access to the text-messaging programme and what kind of use cases are envisaged?
I totally agree with my noble friend. It would have been very useful yesterday and it should be available across all emergency services networks: fire and ambulance, and in the Underground as well.