59. Mr Gieve, may I just give you another chance to reply to the questions Mr Trickett put to you earlier on because they were perfectly fair questions? He said that this money would be better spent on more police Officers and your reply was that you had to make a decision. If I may help you out-because I always like to help witnesses out if I can-the key paragraph here is this paragraph 3.28 on page 36. This seems to me absolutely key on the typical pattern of an Officer's day. "If Airwave could help bring about a 10% saving in the time spent by Officers in the police station, this would be the national equivalent to deploying an extra 1,200 Officers". I know we have had a discussion on this but this is what is worrying me. I do not understand how this statement is arrived at. I agree none of us is expert on how police Officers spend their time in a police station but could somebody help us out on how we are going to deploy an extra 1200 Officers just because of a different radio system? You do see that it is not very clear from this report.
(Mr Gieve) Despite what Mr Trickett says, this is an NAO Report. I think they are just giving that as an illustrative figure. You are asking how this will help to improve the effectiveness and efficiency with which police time is used. We have said that it will help in a number of ways. We shall be able to send data to police who are outside the station. They will have to make fewer calls; if you talk to police now they will tell you that very often there is interference on the calls they make, they lose contact, they have to ring back and so on. This will improve that. It will allow better deployment of police; certainly the message we get back from North Yorkshire is that knowing where your police are at any one time is no small thing in terms of deploying them and getting the nearest person to the right area. This is an illustrative number, that is all it is. The general argument is that we do not just want more police, but we want them to be effective and part of making them effective is equipping them with up-to-date equipment and that is what this is about. Yes, there is a choice about how far you go, but our view is that Airwave is giving them an up-to-date digital radio system which is a key part of equipping them properly and therefore making them effective. In most other services that would be taken for granted, as it is in the Fire Service or the Ambulance Service.
Chairman: Are you happy with that, Mr Trickett?
Jon Trickett: Thank you.