Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how much has been spent since April 2015 on (1) establishing the Emergency Services Network, and (2) running the existing Airwave service.

The ESMCP 2021 Full Business Case estimated the total cost of providing critical emergency services communications between 2015/16 and 2036/37 was £11.3bn. This is the combined Airwave and legacy contracts and costs of the replacement ESN service. It assumed Airwave and legacy system costs of approximately £450m annually compared with ESN at around £250m. The annual running cost of ESN compared to Airwave and legacy costs is expected to save over £200m a year.