To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many Airwave handsets issued to his Department's Fraud Investigation Service have been lost in each year since their introduction; and how many handsets issued to the service have been disabled by the service provider through (a) loss, (b) breakage and (c) other reasons in each such year. (246191)

The information is as follows:

(a) The Airwave service went live in the DWP in August 2007, and in the 2007-08 year, one radio was lost and disabled. Since then no radios have been lost.

(b) There have been no breakages to radio terminals that have necessitated a terminal to be disabled.

(c) In one or two instances the radios fitted to surveillance vehicles can be difficult to remove, so when these vehicles are in for routine mechanical servicing the radios are temporarily disabled, as a precaution, for the duration of the service.