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The Met alone accounted for 5.2m of the 18m spend over six years nearly a third of the entire national total.

The findings have sparked alarm among campaigners, who point to the Mets history of using undercover cops to target peaceful activists groups, some of whom have formed romantic relationships and even had children with the people they are surveilling.

Police in Wales were secretly recorded last year trying to recruit a Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist to be an informant.

Lowri Davies, who was one of the organisers for Swansea BLM group, accused the police of grooming to entice me into being an informant, adding: I was asked to be an informant under manipulative false pretences, and asked questions that made me fear for my safety as well as the safety of my loved ones. Last month, Swansea BLM group decided to close down, citing the attempted recruitment as one of the reasons.

Last July, a former police officer turned environmental campaigner claimed the Met tried to recruit him to spy on Extinction Rebellion.

And in January, a tribunal ordered the Met and the National Police Chiefs Council to pay 229,000 in compensation to an environmental activist who was deceived into having a sexual relationship with an undercover officer. An inquiry into undercover policing is ongoing.

Using FOI requests, openDemocracy asked the UKs 48 police forces how much they had spent on informants since 2015, including on informants within BLM and green groups.

Of the 32 police forces that disclosed figures, Kent Police, Thames Valley Police, West Midlands Police, Police Scotland and Police Service of Northern Ireland were among the biggest spenders.

Kevin Blowe from the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) told openDemocracy: Policing's knee-jerk response to any question about its intelligence capabilities is always to 'neither confirm nor deny'. However the detail behind these figures matter

We know national units are particularly interested in new and emerging campaigns and there is evidence this has recently included Black Lives Matter campaigners, not least because the policing's own inspectorate body has said so.

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Police refuse to say if Black Lives Matter targeted as forces spend 18m on informants - Open Democracy