By Steve Ranger, 13 February 2008 11:36
NEWS
The taxman is spending £60m on a secure communications system to help in its crackdown on fraudsters and smugglers.
Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has signed a 15-year deal to provide its criminal investigation and detection teams with the Airwave digital radio system. A control room will be established and the contract will allow 4,000 handsets to connect to the Airwave network.
HMRC's law enforcement arm investigates and detects crimes involving tax fraud, smuggling and related issues, providing the intelligence needed for the prosecution of individuals in breach of UK law with regards to tax and duties.
Airwave said HMRC officers using the network will be able to communicate securely with other users such as police and port authorities, because voice and data traffic carried over it can be encrypted to prevent eavesdropping.
HMRC's project manager, Stephen Walton, said security was always going to be a "major factor" when it came to choosing the radio network, although a network that provides coverage across a wide area was also important.
Airwave's network covers 99 per cent of Great Britain's land mass including all major and minor roads, the company said.
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1. Mike James
From a tax payers point of view it would be interesting to see if the money spent is going to come back in terms of better ability to regain lost or avoided tax revenue. From a business point of view is the current system degraded to a stage that it is costing money, will spending this money bring in more revenue or reduce outgoings to greater degree than the money spent.
In this day and age we are bounded by costs and benefit, I am sceptical as to weather HMRC is governed by this same good business sense; would an unsecured cheaper communications system be significantly less costly and only slightly less effective and bring in the same or more funds for less outlay.