HM CUSTOMS & EXCISE
15 February 1996
STATEMENT BY THE CHAIRMAN OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE
The following is a statement by the Chairman of Customs and Excise
about the Scott Report. The reason for the separate statement is
that Customs and Excise is an independent prosecuting authority of
the Crown.
Mrs Strachan said:
"Sir Richard Scott's Report contains, as expected, many references to
Customs and Excise and we shall be looking carefully at his conclus-
ions on past actions and his proposals for change.
The Inquiry has found no evidence of impropriety in the way in which
the Matrix Churchill prosecution was brought, but does identify
`certain shortcomings' in some of the cases, including Matrix
Churchill.
The considered conclusion of Sir Richard, in the light of all that he
has seen, is positively against the need for any transfer of the
Department's investigation and prosecuting role to another agency.
He has, however, recommended that the Commissioners should exercise
their prosecuting function for export control offences under a more
formalised system of supervision by the Attorney General. I am
already on record as stating that a closer more clearly articulated
relationship may be positively beneficial. The form it might take is
of course a matter for the Government and will be considered as part
of the Government response.
Sir Richard also makes a number of other recommendations relating to
the law, procedures and practice. These will be given careful and
positive consideration.
Sir Richard recognises the strength of the evidence of deliberate
deception by Matrix Churchill executives which led us to initiate and
continue the prosecution, but he criticises, in particular, the way
in which we investigated possible lines of defence.
First, he criticises our investigators for being insufficiently
rigorous and searching in their questioning of Mr Alan Clark. We
accept that if Mr Clark had at an earlier stage given the evidence he
eventually did after two days in the witness box in court the
prosecution would never have been brought. But at the time our
investigator took Mr Clark's witness statement Mr Clark had already
publicly denied allegations that he had given encouragement to Matrix
Churchill and allowed assurances to be made to Parliament to that
effect. In the light of this it is not reasonable to expect our
investigator to have subjected Mr Clark to a lengthy interrogation.
Mr Clark had a number of further opportunities to correct his
statement.
Second, he criticises our search for documents in other departments
which failed to identify some 23 documents (about 70 pages). We
certainly regret that. But it has to be set against the 10,000 pages
of material from Government departments alone which were examined,
and the 634 pages which were identified and disclosed following the
trial judge's ruling on PII, and that was in addition to several
hundred pages already disclosed earlier in the prosecution.
Even so, with the benefit of hindsight (and Sir Richard emphasises
that his own conclusions have been reached with hindsight), there are
things we too wish had been done differently. We have already taken
steps to make improvements, for example in the way in which we handle
intelligence and the approach we take in identifying documents in
other government departments to meet our disclosure obligations in
criminal cases.
Since the Matrix Churchill case, we have also improved our procedures
for handling cases so that the roles of solicitors, investigators and
policy administrators are more clearly recognised. We shall be
aiming to improve these procedures further in the light of Sir
Richard's recommendations.
If we had known then all that we know now, I believe that the Matrix
Churchill prosecution would not have been brought, but I also believe
that the decisions were taken in good faith and reasonably at the
time."
CHAIRMAN
HM CUSTOMS AND EXCISE
