On 26th March this year, the UK Government announced that Bristow Helicopters Group had won the £1.6 billion contract to provide civilian search and rescue (SAR) service on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). The announcement, while welcomed by many, has also been derided by some. On the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme on the day of the statement (www.bbc. co.ukews/uk-21934077), Howard Wheeldon, a defence analyst with Wheeldon Strategic Advisory Ltd, made the following pronouncements: "Will the private sector operation take on the same sort of risks that the RAF, the Royal Navy and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency do, on the same scale? I rather doubt that they will. We've got to look at this in a wider context, are we doing the right thing in putting this in private hands, where there's a profit motive as opposed to 'let's get on and do the job' - and the military have been absolutely fantastic."
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