Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether the technology underlying the new Emergency Services Network will be capable of meeting all the operational requirements of the emergency services, including 'device-to-device' communications used when the wider network is unreachable, for example in rural locations.

The Home Office fully understands the capabilities needed by the emergency services to transition safely to ESN, and is considering a number of options for off-network comms Airwave will only be shut down when the conditions for a safe and timely transition to ESN have been met.