Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office - the first year

Gavin McFarlane of Temple Chambers Cardiff

The Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO), which began life on 18 April 2005, could not have sailed out into choppier waters. It was established as a direct response to the damning criticism of Customs prosecutions practice in the Butterfield Report, the last in a long series of inquiries into failed prosecutions and investigations carried out by Customs and Excise. Even as the new office started work, prosecutions already working their way through the pipeline continued to collapse, the media faithfully reporting the scathing comments of judges who halted the cases. For some time it seemed that the new RCPO would simply stagger on in the mould of its immediate predecessor with disaster piled on disaster.