There is a figure that landed on my desk this morning that I cannot stop thinking about. In 2025, Police Scotland’s Operation Portaledge paid criminal informants a total of £342,730. That is up from £303,610 the year before. These are people officially known as Covert Human Intelligence Sources, which is the sort of language that makes you forget we are talking about paying criminals to inform on other criminals.
The Numbers Behind the Gang War
Operation Portaledge has been running for some time now, targeting organised gang violence across Glasgow and Edinburgh. To date, the probe has resulted in more than 60 arrests. That sounds impressive, and in many ways it is. But I find myself asking whether a 13 percent increase in informant spending year on year is a sign of progress or a sign that the problem is getting worse.
The uncomfortable truth is that paying informants works. It has always worked. Every major organised crime takedown in this country has relied on someone on the inside willing to talk, usually for money. The question is not whether it works but what it costs us beyond the invoice.
The Moral Arithmetic
When you pay a criminal informant, you are making a deal with someone who is, by definition, embedded in criminal activity. You are deciding that the intelligence they provide is worth more than the accountability you are setting aside. That is a calculation every police force makes, and it is one that rarely gets discussed in public.
I am not naive about this. I understand that you cannot dismantle gang networks from the outside. You need people who know the players, who attend the meetings, who understand the supply chains. But £342,000 is not a small number, and the public deserves to know that this money is being spent wisely.
What Sixty Arrests Actually Mean
Sixty arrests over the life of an operation sounds significant. But arrests are not convictions. And convictions do not always mean the network is broken. For every gang leader who goes down, there are three people waiting to take their place. That is the nature of organised crime in Scotland’s cities, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
I support the police in this work. I believe informants are a necessary tool. But I also believe that a 13 percent spending increase deserves scrutiny, and that the people of Glasgow and Edinburgh are entitled to ask whether Operation Portaledge is winning or simply managing.