Revealed: calls to anti-terror hotline
Updated on 24 April 2009
More than 60,000 calls have been received by the UK's controversial anti-terror hotline in recent years, new figures reveal.
The number of tip offs received by the confidential hotline has reached almost 25 a day, the Metropolitan Police documents show.
Details of the calls - released to Channel 4 News under freedom of information (FoI) rules - show the fluctuating patterns of activity on the hotline.
The data shows a record 24,000 calls were received in July 2005, the month of the London attacks. The next highest total was in January this year, at 1,301.
The overall number of tip offs has grown from an average of 253 calls a month in 2002/3, to 415 a month in 2008/9.
In total, 62,301 calls were received by the hotline in the past seven years, the only period for which data is held. Every call to the hotline is referred to be analysed by senior officers.
Critics of the hotline - media campaigns have asked people to report such things as unusual rubbish in bins and multiple mobile phone ownership - say it is an example of an indiscriminate surveillance society.
Click on the graph below to see the number of calls to the Hotline each month.
The hotline has been advertised in poster, pamphlet and TV campaigns in recent years. While even district council websites carry its details.
Last year another FoI request revealed the Met had even put £42,000 aside to promote the hotline online with Google Ads in 2008/9.
The Met was not able to provide Channel 4 News with staffing costs or requirements for the line, although in 2007 then Home Office minister Tony McNulty said two civilian staff and two police officers looked after the phones at Scotland Yard. Extra staff are drafted in when call numbers increase heavily.
The hotline was actually established in 1991, when it was originally seen as a tool to counter the threat of the IRA. Data for the volume of calls has only been held for the past seven years.
A spokesman for the Met said: "Due to the confidential nature of the information received by the Anti-Terrorist hotline it would be inappropriate to discuss specific lines of inquiry or investigations generated by calls.
"There are many reasons why there may be an increase in calls to the Anti-Terrorist Hotline in a certain period.
"They may include proactive publicity campaigns designed to raise public awareness of the hotline, media coverage of police operations or criminal trials either in the UK or overseas.
"Terrorists can be stopped in their tracks if suspicious activity is passed to police. They will not succeed if people report something unusual they have seen while going about their daily lives. No piece of information is considered too small or insignificant."
