Police spend £13.6m on informers over last five years, figures reveal

POLICE FORCES across the UK have spent at least £13.6m on informants over the last five years, new figures reveal.

Informants are used by the police to find out information on criminal activity such as murder, burglaries and drug rings.

Some critics have labelled using them as an “ineffective use of money”.

The Metropolitan Police paid out a total of £4m over the last five years, a study by the University of Portsmouth Journalism department found.

West Yorkshire Police had the seventh highest spending, having paid out £451,759 to its Covert Intelligence Sources, in the five years from 2014/15.

The force declined to comment when approached about its expenditure and whether the use of its informants was cost-effective.

Mark Burns-Williamson, inset, West Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, said the amount was “proportionate” when looking at the threat and demand the force faces.

Yorkshire’s three other police forces failed to respond to the Freedom of Information request by the university.

Former undercover policeman Neil Wood said that, in his experience, informants could be paid anything from £20 to £15,000 for information leading to successful arrests and around 90 per cent were used to investigate drug-related offences.

He is now chief executive of Law Enforcement Action Partnership and has doubts about whether informants are effective in tackling drug dealing.

“If you arrest a drug dealer on the information of an informant, you remove a drug dealer,” he said. “All it does is create an opportunity for another drug dealer; crime doesn’t reduce.”