Yahoo Finance Motorola sues Home Office over £14m ‘unpaid’ bills
The Home Office has been sued for more than £14m by Motorola over claims that bills for Britain’s police radio network have been left unpaid.
Motorola Solutions, which owns the network, has accused the Government of underpaying it since March 2023, according to court documents seen by The Telegraph.
The claim relates to the Airwave network – Britain’s ageing push-to-talk radio infrastructure that provides the UK’s 999 services with critical communications.
Airwave has been the subject of a long-running row between the Government and Motorola amid a much-delayed upgrade programme, which aims to replace the police radio network with modern 4G technology. Plans to switch off the old system have been repeatedly pushed back, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds.
The Home Office has accused Motorola of making outsized profits from Airwave, over which it has a monopoly. Last year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found Motorola stood to make “supernormal” profits from Airwave of more than £1bn over the decade.
The regulator implemented a price cap on the system that would cut Motorola’s profits by around £200m per year.
However, Motorola has now sued the government department, alleging it has been short-changing it on fees for the system for over a year.
“The defendant has failed to pay the full amounts of the charges due to the claimant in relation to invoices,” Motorola’s claim form said. In the documents, filed last month, it claimed the Home Office had failed to pay additional costs linked to inflation.
The US technology company added that the Home Office “asserts, wrongfully, that all invoices issued in respect of charges from 2021 onwards are incorrect”.
Motorola has filed multiple lawsuits against the Government since the start of the year, retaining heavyweight law firms Slaughter and May and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
The company has also said it has challenged an order from the Home Office in the High Court to forcibly extend its contract to run the Airwave network until 2029 as being “in breach of applicable UK procurement and public law”.
A Motorola spokesman said: “The Airwave network is critical, connecting 300,000 emergency services workers all day every day. We have continually delivered this life-saving service to the highest standards.
“The contract is clear that the core charge for this service increases with inflation, and Airwave has billed the Home Office accordingly. Despite concerted efforts to resolve this dispute, the Home Office has failed to pay the full amount of sums due to Airwave under invoices issued since 22 March 2023. We have therefore issued court proceedings to recover this debt and the interest which continues to accrue.”
The Home Office is yet to file a defence. A spokesman declined to comment.
