Seven police forces have revealed details of how much they spend on informants, but have refused to provide details about how many individuals were on their payroll and whether any registered informants have been convicted of crimes.
The Epoch Times made a request to 10 police forces and the National Crime Agency (NCA) under the Freedom of Information Act for information about covert human intelligence sources (CHISs).
All 10 forces refused to provide information about the number of individuals who were registered as CHISs in the year ending March 2022, and how it compared with the number from the previous 10 years.
Police Scotland claimed: “Disclosure would present an increased risk to those operating as CHIS as it would lead to members of organised crime groups seeking to identify any CHIS who may be reporting their activities ... Disclosure would allow apparent spikes to be identified that could in turn be associated to a particular serious crime and compromise a CHIS operation.”
In a statement, an officer from Police Scotland’s Freedom of Information team added, “Although I consider that public awareness would favour a disclosure as it would contribute to the public debate surrounding the application of these measures, we must ensure that the release of this level of detail is not inadvertently providing potentially harmful information and placing an individual at risk.”
In the criminal underworld police informants are seen as the lowest of the low and to be outed as a CHIS could put an individual’s life in danger.
In February the BBC reported Scotland’s appeal court had mistakenly published the name of a police informant whose secret identity was protected by the Scottish High Court the previous month.
The CHIS was a senior member of a Scottish gang and gave evidence in March 2022 at the trial of Christopher Hughes, who was convicted of murdering Dutch crime blogger Martin Kok, who was shot dead outside an Amsterdam sex club in December 2016.
Duncan MacLaughlin, a former Scotland Yard specialist operations detective, told The Epoch Times, “I am not surprised by these police forces refusing to give you this information as they rarely invite scrutiny of the handling of informants.”
MacLaughlin, the author of “The Filth: The Explosive Inside Story of Scotland Yard’s Top Undercover Cop,” added: “The Met can’t be trusted to keep the identity of an informant confidential. They’ve admitted as much when trying to unravel the identity of one of mine who grassed up a Met commander.”
‘Police Informants System Needs Greater Scrutiny’
MacLaughlin said, “The entire system of police informants needs greater scrutiny, both to ensure criminals are being handled ethically and not being granted immunity, but also to protect those genuine informants from having their status leaked and exposing them to great danger.”Seven of the 10 forces gave details about the amount of money they paid out to informants annually, while Greater Manchester Police refused to do so. Merseyside Police has yet to respond to the Freedom of Information request at all, while Northumbria Police asked for clarification.
The National Crime Agency has also failed to respond, while MI5 has a special exemption from the Freedom of Information Act and is therefore allowed to keep all details about its covert human intelligence sources secret.
The Metropolitan Police—the UK’s largest police force—was unsurprisingly the biggest purchaser of information from CHISs. It paid out £4.88 million to informants in the last five years with the figure rising from £879,676 in 2017/18 to £1.1 million in 2021/22.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it had spent £1.73 million on informants in the last five years, with the highest annual amount—£433,080—in 2019/2020.
West Midlands Police spent a total of £1.07 million in the last five years, with the figure rising annually until 2020/21 when it reached £272,931, before falling the following year to £226,511.
A total of £626,240 was paid out by West Yorkshire Police, which saw its annual figure rise gradually from £92,449 in 2017/18 to £164,191 in 2021/22.
Avon and Somerset Police paid out a total of £331,310 over the last five years.
South Wales Police paid out £277,422 over the last six years, with the figure actually falling from £56,091 in 2016/17 to £40,165 in 2021/22.
Police Scotland said it had paid out £2.93 million since 2010 with the figure rising from £142,123 in 2010 to £305,588 in 2021, before falling to £288,850 the following year.
All 10 forces also refused to give any information about how many CHISs had been convicted of criminal offences between 2010 and 2022, or how many had been deregistered owing to doubts about their motivation or the quality of the information they provided.
The police forces also refused to confirm how often they, or the prosecuting authorities, had applied for Public Interest Immunity to protect the identities of CHISs being revealed in a court of law.
The handling of police informants has been a controversial subject ever since the first supergrass, Bertie Smalls, gave evidence in 1974.
In 2008 Darren Mathurin was convicted of murdering Jahmall Moore in London and jailed for life with a minimum tariff of 22 years, but he subsequently did a secret deal with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service and his sentence was reduced to eight years in return for him giving evidence in several other murder trials.
The prosecutor at one of those trials, Stephen Batten, QC, told the jury Mathurin “had a history of a life of crime,” but he said the alternative to offering him a deal was “murderers may go free.”
