Duty and Customs Column

It seemed just like another Wednesday morning at the office when the lawyers who work in London for the Solicitor for Customs & Excise sat down at their desks on 29 September. But the realisation that something extraordinary was in the air began to dawn on them when they were suddenly called into a meeting of which no prior notice had been given. To general astonishment they realised that sitting there were the Treasury Solicitor who is the highest ranking lawyer in the whole of the Government Legal Service the Attorney General and Sir David Calvert Smith QC the former Director of Public Prosecutions. Clearly they had not been called together in such...