74. I am not sure that "all your eggs in one basket" is looking too good, but perhaps "a pig in a poke" is.
(Mr Gieve) Why do you say that?
75. Unless we know the cost and how these things are operated. I should like the details of how much it costs.
(Mr Gieve) The costs in this report, which are shown as around £1.5 billion over 20 years, include an estimate of the costs of the handsets and so on. It is not additional to those costs. In the beginning of this report it has a costing.6
76. If we have sharers who want to join in later on, what sort of cost do they face? The same sort of cost?
(Mr Gieve) There is a tariff in the report on page 18.
77. Yes; it is lower.
(Mr Gieve) That tariff does have a charge for each radio which is on a different basis from the charging for the Police Service so it is not possible to make an exact read-across. If, for example, the Department of Health decide to buy Airwave for the whole of the Ambulance Service, say, they will negotiate a price from O2 which reflects the costs to O2.
78. If I have a lot of people who want to join O2 now, since you are the purchaser of this system in effect, you funded this development, you funded the setting up of this system, the taxpayer has funded it, how much does the taxpayer get back? What percentage does the taxpayer get back for every additional user of the system?
(Mr Gieve) Under the contract we have at the moment we do not get anything back for extra users. The deal we have done with O2 is that they will take the risk from not getting extra users and they will take the gain from getting extra users. What those gains will be depends on the deals they do with other users. Those are also likely to be taxpayers, the Fire Service or whatever.
79. If the Fire Service, as part of the original deal, decided that it was going to cost, say, £2,000 per radio, but if they did not go into the original deal but came in as a sharer later on it was going to cost £500 per radio, for instance, they would save £1,500 per radio. They are not stupid, are they?
(Mr Gieve) The Fire Service left the procurement process in 1996 before any of these numbers were available. They were not doing it on the basis of that. Secondly, they are engaged at the moment in a series of regional procurements, but they have not yet done a deal, so I do not know what the costs will be. Yes, it may be a good deal for them, it is possible, but they have not yet done it.
80. Can anyone else join? Can anyone else who is not an emergency service join and take up the offer with Airwave?
(Mr Gieve) No, there is a limit under the terms of the licence that the DTI run. There is a list on page 17 of the people we think qualify at present. That can be expanded if the DTI agree, but this is essentially a public service emergency service frequency and it is being reserved for that.
81. We have that tied up then.
(Mr Gieve) Yes.
(Mr Webb) It is in the process of being extended; there are discussions with gas and water and these sorts of other utilities.
82. Because they are emergency standby services.
(Mr Webb) For the emergency aspect of that.
83. So it can go to water, gas, electricity.
(Mr Webb) For their emergency services.
84. Can it go to private ambulances as well?
(Mr Webb) If they are registered as part of the emergency service.
85. So it is flexible.
(Mr Webb) To people providing emergency services.
(Mr Gieve) Not very flexible. If you look at the list on page 17, I think you would agree that all of those are emergency services.
86. But they can be added to. I am not familiar with the term "call dropping". What is it and how big a problem is it?
(Mr Asque) The issue here is that when somebody uses their radio, especially early on when people were using their radio as part of the pilot, or as the system was being installed, on quite a number of occasions for one reason or another they would not immediately get through. This was given the name "call dropping". In practice there are many technical reasons with the network being implemented why that has happened. A lot of work has happened in the pilot to identify these issues and to solve them one by one. There are several issues behind this generic title. When the user does not get through, they do not get through and that is all they want to know. They do not want to know all the technical details behind that of course, but in fact there was a whole raft of technical detail which led to these sorts of things -
87. They have not been sorted yet, have they?
(Mr Asque)-which one by one are being solved and there are no unknown issues now. All the issues have been addressed.
88. One of the advantages you have is that we have never seen this in operation. I have never seen a dummy of it but I have seen some of the proposals where we were going to use police Officers in police cars and through this system be able to download stuff to the onboard computer and upgrade stuff on the car computer system and transmit that to the station, thereby saving the Officers time to go back to the station. They could type that or even, God forbid, dictate their reports, which could be typed up on a central computer system and there would be very little need to go back to the station apart from the start and finish of the shift. This technology will drive the Officers' timetables and keep them up to date on a minute by minute basis. Is that still the aim?
(Mr Asque) That is broadly the intention. It is a very flexible system and there are lots of phases of developments. At the moment the system is being rolled out and the intention is simply to replace the previous generation of voice communications and slowly add on these additional facilities ranging from small bits of data to very large amounts of data. It is a progressive implementation.
89. When we have gone through these next three years and we have invested this extra £500 million in the system, we then get to a crunch point. We either pick up the bill again for the next five years or the chief constables will come and explain to us that since they have to fund this over a 19-year cycle they cannot pay for that and the police Officers. You have to convince them that the new technology means a more efficient use of their police Officers so they will not require those police Officers. Can you tell me how you are going to do that and tell me what I can say to my constituents as well?
(Mr Gieve) The last spending review set our budget for the years to 2003-04. We set aside up to £500 million to meet the costs of Airwave during that three-year period. We are currently engaged in the next spending review, which will roll that forward for another two years, so we do not know yet what the total police budget will be. We have not yet decided how much we shall give out in specific grants for particular technologies and how much we shall give out in a general unhypothecated amount. There are necessary uncertainties about exactly what the position will be in three years' or more time. I should just like to say that we have done this development and we are continuing to run this project with the full co-operation of the police authorities and ACPO, both of whom are on the programme board, in fact a police chief was actually chair of the project board when the contract was signed. It is not the case that they are saying they will only take it if we force it on them. They are very keen to have Airwave and their main concern is whether it is coming in early enough.
Mr Jenkins: Anything for free.
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6 Note by witness: The costs in this report are shown as £1.47 billion over 19 years for the core service and the 'Menu Elclusive' services. This excludes the cost of handsets and control room equipment which are estimated at £280 million over 19 years and will be purchased by each police force to meet their needs.