Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on how many occasions Vodafone and other mobile phone networks have failed to provide mobile phone coverage for police during disaster recovery situations in the last 12 months; and what steps she plans to take to remedy this.

The police and other emergency services in Britain use the Airwave network for operational communications in both routine and emergency situations. Airwave is a dedicated private cellular radio network. The performance of Airwave is constantly monitored and we can confirm that the service has been available in all serious emergencies the police have dealt with in the last 12 months.

Individual police forces do have contracts with mobile network operators, such as Vodafone and other providers, however we do not hold information regarding their coverage availability for individual police forces in emergency situations.