Hong Kong police pot for informer payments and confidential operations hits HK$165 million for 2024-25; total budget goes up to HK$27.8 billion

The police “rewards and special services” category covers expenses related to confidential operations, as well as bounties on wanted people and payments to informers.

A force spokesman on Thursday declined to give details on the increase for security reasons.

“Expenses under ‘rewards and special services’ and relevant information involve confidential operations of the police force,” he said. “Therefore, we cannot disclose anything further on the matter.”

The force was expected to spend HK$141 million on the category in the revised estimate for 2023-24. The actual expenditure for the year before was HK$143.9 million.

New details on national security expenses were not included in the budget document, released on Wednesday.

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Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po explained that expenditure in the area would be handled through a separate budget from the Committee for Safeguarding National Security.

City government costs for national security affairs that have been revealed came to HK$13 billion as of last year.

A total of HK$5 billion was earmarked for non-recurrent spending on national security in 2023-24, according to the government gazette last March.

The remaining HK$8 billion was included in a separate document listing the estimated revenue and expenditure of several government accounts in the 2021-22 budget.

Lawmaker Doreen Kong Yuk-foon said the public should not expect national security expenses to be held to the same standard of accountability as police funding, because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

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Kong, a lawyer, added that the city might not have the right to scrutinise local national security expenditure if the budget was handled by the committee, which is headed by the chief executive.

“If the national security law has stated that we have no right to do so … we cannot challenge that,” Kong said.

Article 14 of the Beijing-imposed national security law stipulates that the committee’s work “shall not be subject to disclosure” or interference from any institution, organisation or individual in the city.

But Kong said the total amount spent on national security was suitable for disclosure, even under stricter confidentiality rules for such funds.

All the city’s uniformed services secured bigger budgets for the 2024-25 financial year.

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The police force is expected to spend HK$27.8 billion, 9.2 per cent more than the revised 2023-24 estimate of HK$25.4 billion.

The second-highest percentage increase went to the Government Flying Service, which got a 6.8 per cent boost to HK$40 million, with the Fire Services Department in third place on HK$572.5 million, 6.4 per cent up on the previous financial year.

However, only the Fire Services Department would increase its number of posts next year. The department had estimated its establishment to be 11,531 strong this year, expecting the figure to rise to 11,673 in 2025.

Among those scaling back manpower, the Correctional Services Department had recorded the biggest drop at 61 posts set to be slashed over these two years.