The 600 officers of the Service de Protection des Hautes Personnalités (SPHP) are selected after gruelling physical and psychological tests and trained to defend politicians against terrorism. They form one of France’s most elite police units — but they are fed up with the missions assigned to them: walking the dog, buying the bread or taking the spouse shopping.

French police unions complain that many are treated as domestic help by the public figures they are supposed to be guarding. They say that SPHP officers are often allocated to minor dignitaries in little danger of attack, under a system that is out of control, with second-string politicians, journalists, business leaders and footballers all benefiting from police minders financed by French taxpayers.

Critics say that the mission creep is symptomatic of President Sarkozy’s struggle to bring a sprawling state apparatus to heel at a time when he needs to devote public money to the fight against recession.

The row has prompted an overhaul of the VIP protection unit, which is likely to mean a cut in the number of people given police guards by the Interior Ministry. Officers will be transferred to the Presidential Security Unit, whose 80 members claim to be exhausted by the demands of round-the-clock protection for Mr Sarkozy.

“There needs to be a complete rethink about the way this service operates,” Frédéric Lagache, the general-secretary of Alliance, the French police union, told The Times. “One of my colleagues’ duties, for example, includes taking the personality he guards to a nightclub every week, waiting outside until it closes, then taking him home again. What’s the point? If this person was at risk, he would be at risk inside the nightclub as well as outside. But he doesn’t want to be accompanied as far as the dancefloor.

“Other colleagues say they are asked to walk the dogs, go down the road to get the baguette or drive the wife to the shops. We have decided to alert the authorities because our colleagues in Paris say they are being misused too often. We are not servants.”

The SPHP is divided into four sections, responsible for protecting the head of state, ministers, foreign dignitaries and personalities “under threat”. The latter section is the focus of controversy, with dozens of figures deemed to be “at risk”, with little apparent justification.

Ingrid Betancourt, the FrancoColombian politician freed last year in July after six years as a hostage of Marxist guerrillas in Colombia, has had two guards since her return to France. They have cost taxpayers €73,238 (£65,000) in nine months, although commentators say Mrs Betancourt is in little danger in France.

In 2006 the French football team were given police bodyguards while training for the World Cup — but the main beneficiaries are politicians. Michel Charasse is guarded permanently by four officiers, on the ground that he is a former Finance Minister — although his last Cabinet appointment was in 1992. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate in 2007, has two minders. When officials suggested reducing her protection earlier this year, she kicked up such a fuss that they backtracked.

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