Armed officers in Bradford have been given the go-ahead to use electric stun guns in firearms incidents.

Home Secretary David Blunkett has announced that police firearms officers across England and Wales would be authorised to use the Taser guns after successful trials by five forces.

He said scientific evaluations had shown the Taser guns had a "very low" risk of fatality.

The American-manufactured weapons have been under controlled testing since April last year as a less lethal alternative to conventional firearms.

The announcement was welcomed by police chiefs and the Police Federation in West Yorkshire, which represents rank and file officers.

Tom McGhie, West Yorkshire Police Federation chairman, said: "Our view is that anything that gives officers an additional option is good.

"As long as they have proved that the guns are effective and do not put anybody at risk, we are happy with the introduction of Tasers.

"There may be situations where someone is armed with a knife and they aren't giving themselves up. Tasers would be a way of containing and arresting them, as opposed to shooting and perhaps killing them, and that has got to be good.

"There is nothing worse for an officer than to have to use a firearm and kill somebody. The whole investigation they have to go through afterwards is so stressful and even when they feel that what they have done was justified, it takes them a long time to justify it to themselves."

Nobody was available for comment from West Yorkshire Police, but the Association of Chief Police Officers said that during the trials of the Taser it was deployed in 60 incidents but only actually fired 13 times, showing that in the majority of cases its presence alone was enough to make the person posing a threat comply with demands and allow the incident to be brought to a peaceful conclusion.

The Taser guns fire needle-tipped darts up to 21 feet to deliver a disabling. high-voltage shock.

They were trialled after growing pressure for a less lethal weapon in a bid to reduce the number of people shot dead by armed police.

The British trials tested the more advanced M26 Taser "electro-muscular disruption" guns, which use a 26-watt charge - 50,000 volts, or less than 0.2 amps - and directly control a target's muscles, forcing him or her to collapse into a foetal ball. Two needle-pointed probes are fired at 180 feet per second at a target by a compressed nitrogen cartridge.

The electrical current will penetrate clothing up to two inches thick.

Manufacturers insist the device causes no long-term injuries and only short-term skin irritation.

But the company does accept there is a danger of eye injury if it is fired at someone's face.

The weapon was first used on a human by British police on August 3 last year when officers in London encountered a man armed with two handguns.