---

Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this amendment picks up a point raised minutes earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and not replied to by the Minister: what are we doing to protect the interests of the emergency services, and our national interests, when it comes to allocating spectrum for them? This has two prongs to its attack. It is clear that the emergency services will, over time, require substantial additional spectrum. I have put in 15 megahertz here just as an illustration of the magnitude of the requirement. Although the current emergency services systems are generally operating well, if near capacity—there have been points in recent times when that has got very close—they were designed 10 years ago. All of us, even those with parliamentary communication systems, are operating at a much more advanced level than the emergency services are able to. If, as I think is inevitable, we give the emergency services the ability to use streaming video—so that the situation on the ground could be immediately communicated to the centre by the constable on the beat, or so that that constable could see immediately the recipe required to free a person from an obstacle or deal with a situation, as would be common on commercial networks that have to deal with such situations—we will require substantial additional spectrum to handle it. If we are going to do that, there is great advantage in harmonising that spectrum across Europe. We achieved this with the current system, and greatly to our benefit. There have been two benefits. One is that because the system operates at common frequencies the kit is much less expensive. Secondly, by being an early adopter of the system, we have been able to take a very large share of the equipment manufacture market for the current system as it is spread out worldwide. It has been a great benefit to us in both those ways. We now appear to be in a situation where a harmonisation process is under way in Europe for future emergency services spectrum. The noble Lord, Lord West, has very sensibly signed up to it on behalf of the Home Office, but Ofcom is doing its best to derail it, because it thinks that it can sell the bit of spectrum that Europe is looking at for more money. That is an extremely short-sighted view. Ofcom may get a bit more money for it now, but it will cost us a great deal more in the future both in terms of the cost of our kit and in terms of lost markets. In this amendment, I am asking that this bit of the Government sign up as the other bit of the Government has. In other words, I ask that we are wholeheartedly part of the European co-operation on finding common spectrum for the next generation of emergency services kit, so that we benefit, or have a very good chance of benefiting, as we have from the current system. I beg to move. Amendment 244 (to Amendment 243) Moved by