Almost £60 million which could be used for fighting crime in the district is being swallowed up by soaring pension payments for retired officers.

A total of 15.6 per cent of West Yorkshire Police's budget - nearly £1 in every £6 - was spent on pensions in the last financial year.

The bill has risen sharply from 13 per cent in 1997, when Tony Blair came to power, according to the Home Office figures released to MPs.

It means £59.3m of West Yorkshire's £380m budget was spent on officers no longer on the beat.

Police officers enjoy better pensions than other public sector workers and there have been repeated complaints that it is too easy for them to retire earl A few years ago, the Police Federation condemned tentative Government plans to bring down the cost of their pension scheme as "shameful".

The Home Office wanted to raise the compulsory retirement age from 55 to 60, reduce widows' pensions and cut lump-sum payments.

But police officers said it would remove their "safety net" and blamed poor administrative management - rather than the scheme itself - for the high cost of pensions.

In the meantime, the Home Office has put strong pressure on all forces to cut the number of early retirements, usually on the grounds of ill-health.

A Westminster source said one solution was for the Home Office to create a "ringfenced" fund for pension payments.

He said: "As life expectancy increases, we are seeing a higher and higher proportion of police authority budgets going towards pensions.

"We all want to see retired officers getting a decent pension, but we need the Home Office to bite the bullet and separate that from the day-to-day running of the police.

"Otherwise, we could reach the stage, in ten or 15 years' time, where one-third of the budget is dead money, instead of being spent on crime prevention."

Nobody was available at West Yorkshire Police Authority to comment on the effect on the force's operations of the loss of £60m from its annual budget.

A Home Office spokesman said a review was underway which was considering a ringfenced fund, with proposals expected to be published early next year.