Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 24 February (HL Deb col 1448), what is the breakdown of the £19.2 billion cost for the Emergency Services Network programme.

The £19.2bn cost for the Emergency Services Network (ESN) covers the period 2015/16 to 2043/44, and is broken down as follows:

Programme Delivery spend is £3.2bn, this includes the cost of developing the ESN network, the Mission Critical Communications (MCX) solution, and includes infrastructure costs.

Ongoing run costs for ESN are calculated at £9.9bn. This includes service charges for both the Mobile Services and User Services contracts.

The continued operation of the Airwave network during the delivery phase of the Programme, and up until completion of transition to ESN is £6.1bn. These legacy costs are expected to last until the final transition date of December 2029, when these legacy systems are expected to be fully replaced by ESN.

These costs, when compared to the estimated cost of running Airwave for the entire period of evaluation, are considerably lower.

Of the £19.2bn, £5.5bn has been spent up to 31 March 2024, with the remaining £13.7bn to be spent by 2043/44.