A £12m television campaign to recruit police officers has, according to figures obtained by the BBC, produced no more than a few hundred, at a cost of £30,000 a head.
Celebrities such as Joan Bakewell, Bob Geldof, Lennox Lewis, Falklands veteran Simon Weston, and Patsy Palmer appeared on bill boards and primetime television advertisements saying they would struggle to cope with the challenges of being a police officer. "I could not do it," they concluded. "Could You?"

According to an analysis by the BBC, the answer is "no".

Of 43 police forces in England and Wales, only 13 could say how many new officers had been attracted by the campaign; between them, they could point to 120 recruits - which suggests a total national figure of around 400.

Glenn Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, yesterday questioned whether the campaign had been appropriate, saying it might have deterred potential recruits by concentrating on the "negative" aspects of policing. Local recruitment drives, by comparison, cost £250 per head in terms of results.

The Home Office yesterday mounted a vigorous defence of its adverts. A spokeswoman said the true number of recruits was higher than the BBC's estimate, because some people contacted their local force directly rather than through an official phone number.

One force alone, Devon and Cornwall, estimated it had had more than 300 recruits from the campaign since September 2000, she said.

"The highly selective and largely inaccurate figures chosen by the BBC paint a distorted picture of police recruitment across the country, whether as a direct result of the advertising campaign or through force recruitment.

"Our research shows that [the campaign] has generated a very positive attitude to joining the police. Our training colleges are full, and we are on target to reach our pledge of 130,000 by spring," she said.

The lack of data was itself a concern, according to Mr Smyth. "The astonishing thing is that only 13 [forces] were able to give a figure so you could judge the value - and that really does need to be done.

"We did need to do an ad campaign. Whether this was the right one, I don't know. It did seem to focus rather on the negative, which might have put people off. It underlines the awful state that police recruitment got itself into."

Eighteen months ago, he said, the Met had only 25,000 officers - the lowest total for 25 years. "Recruitment in London is pretty good - whether you can attribute it to this campaign, I don't know."

Tim Collins, shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said that the Home Office was more concerned over the government's image than over the shortage of officers.

"The government is spending more on advertising than any previous administration," he said. "Now it turns out that most of the money has been wasted."