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Motorola Solutions is suing the UK government as part of a dispute over a programme to modernise communications for the country’s emergency services that has cost billions of pounds but is yet to be rolled out.
An arm of Motorola, Airwave Solutions, filed a lawsuit in the High Court in London last month seeking £14.5mn, which covers outstanding invoices and interest.
The revamp of the communications system is designed to allow ambulance workers, firefighters and police officers to access and share images, information and other data when responding to emergencies.
Work started on the new service, called the Emergency Services Network, in 2015. It was originally scheduled to replace the existing Airwave service after this was due to end in 2019.
Motorola has accused the Home Office of being in “breach of contract” over money it is owed related to the Airwave service. It is seeking £13.5mn from the government plus interest, which at the end of May stood at almost £1mn.
In a statement, Motorola said the “contract is clear that the core charge for this service increases with inflation, and Airwave has billed the Home Office accordingly”.
The Home Office declined to comment.
The lawsuit from Motorola is the latest salvo in the long-running dispute over the planned upgrade.
The Competition and Markets Authority in 2022 provisionally concluded that Motorola had acted as a monopoly in its role as a service provider, making about £160mn in excess profits.
Motorola at the time said it rejected the “unfounded and incorrect calculation” of excess profits. However, it agreed to end its involvement in ESN in 2022 and the following year the CMA imposed a cap on how much Motorola could charge the emergency services to use the Airwave network.
The US company is attempting to appeal the CMA’s ruling at the England & Wales Court of Appeal in London.
Last year, the public accounts committee warned that the Home Office appeared “complacent” in its confidence that it could reduce the risks to ESN and found “significant” costs were being created for emergency services owing to continued delays.
According to a report last year from the National Audit Office, the Home Office acknowledged the cost of the delays in introducing the new system. The department forecast that by March 2023 it would have spent £2bn developing ESN and a further £2.9bn to maintain Airwave, the report said.