Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that Extended Area Service mast sites for the Emergency Services Network will be capable of accommodating multiple vendors to afford optimum potential for all users.

The Emergency Services Network (ESN) is being put in place to provide a new generation of communications for the emergency services and its focus must be to provide the critical national infrastructure to do so. Aligned with the Mobile Network Operators, Government has ambitions to improve mobile coverage in the UK. Clearly, where practicable, it makes sense to ensure that ESN helps to meet both objectives. Government is in communication with the operators to confirm how we will do that in practice.