Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR DAVID
GREEN QC
21 MAY 2008
Q40 Mr Bacon: I have a chart here
showing payments in different years to different sets and 18 Red
Lion Court is the top set.
Mr Green: Yes.
Q41 Mr Bacon: In the year before
you joined in December 2004, that is to say in the 2003-04 financial
year, 18 Red Lion Court had £1.6 million, 12.7% of the monies
being spent. In the following financial year, 2004-05, the year
in which you joined, it went up to nearly 22%.
Mr Green: Yes.
Q42 Mr Bacon: £3.4 million,
it then went down slightly, it then went up again and the average
over the period was 19.4%, some £9.7 million.
Mr Green: Yes.
Q43 Mr Bacon: 18 Red Lion Court,
2 Bedford Row and 5 St Andrew's Hill between them account for
something like 35% of the payments made during those three financial
years.
Mr Green: Yes.
Q44 Mr Bacon: Is that simply a reflection
of the fact that the type of work is concentrated in a certain
number of barristers who aggregate into a small number of sets?
Mr Green: Anyone who knows the
criminal Bar will tell you that 18 Red Lion Court and its previous
incarnation as 5 King's Bench Walk, has always been a centre of
excellence in the prosecution of Customs work—although I
say it myself, that is why I do this job. In addition, in answer
to your first point, £634,000 of the £3.4 million that
was received by barristers in my old chambers in 2004-05 was in
respect of two very large cases which were given to those three
silks in fact way before I was appointed. I can assure you—
Q45 Mr Bacon: One could put a fairly
unattractive construction on this: not only was the COO giving
money to his wife but you were giving money to your old friends
at your old set. On the basis of the figures that is sort of what
it could look like.
Mr Green: That is very amusing,
Mr Bacon, but totally incorrect.
Q46 Mr Bacon: I am glad you find
it funny; I will have to try a new career as a stand-up comic.
Mr Green: I can assure you that
I have nothing whatever to do with the apportionment of briefs
to individual barristers; I have actually said during my time
as Director on two occasions that a particular barrister should
be instructed and he was not in 18 Red Lion Court. It is actually
true that there are five members of my old chambers who are standing
counsel to Revenue and Customs Prosecution; two of those have
joined since I left—birds of a feather flock together, they
want to go to those chambers because they do a lot of Customs
work.
Q47 Mr Bacon: Sure. Is it possible
that your office could send us—this came to me via a journalist
via your press office apparently—an up-to-date version going
back to 2003-04.[1]
Mr Green: Yes. We had enquiries
from a journalist at Private Eye who I expect gave it to
you.
Q48 Mr Bacon: I do not think it was
a Private Eye journalist, it was the much more reputable
Sunday Telegraph.
Mr Green: The Sunday Telegraph.
We were delighted to give that information and you can certainly
have it.
Q49 Mr Bacon: That would be great.
The one thing that does strike me about this is that obviously
you were appointed because of your expertise as a criminal silk
in this particular area.
Mr Green: That is very kind.
Q50 Mr Bacon: Not having been involved
in your appointment but looking at your CV, this is what I surmised.
Once you become a public servant and in particular once you become
an Accounting Officer there are other obligations that have nothing
to do with your expertise as a criminal silk which you have to
take account of. Do you think you were prepared for what was involved
in becoming an Accounting Officer? What training did you have
to become an Accounting Officer? Did the Treasury just send you
their leaflet on responsibilities?
Mr Green: No, there was a course
for an Accounting Officer in January 2005.
Q51 Mr Bacon: How long was the course?
Mr Green: Half a day. It was a
very good course.
Q52 Mr Bacon: I am sure it was value
for money.
Mr Green: Yes, indeed.
Q53 Mr Bacon: There is a document
called "Responsibilities of Accounting Officers" which
doubtless you would have seen and, frankly, you could spend half
a day just going through that carefully, highlighting and making
notes on it. What I am really getting at is there was obviously
a financial mess but we have had a lot of criticism in this Committee
about organisations that do not have finance directors on the
board and one of the answers is we are really quite a small organisation;
by these standards you are a tiny organisation and I understand
the point about materiality vis-a"-vis the whole HMRC from
which you were split off, but it does not sound that difficult
to get hold of this kind of level of expenditure when it is all
going to the same fairly small group of people. You could probably
keep fairly accurate track of it with a quill pen if there were
the management disciplines and the will to do so.
Mr Green: The head of finance
that we inherited left in December 2005 and it was not until March
2006 that we got the next permanent head of finance, and it was
between that time and September 2006 that we designed the new
system for the counsel fees expenditure and got that into play.
Q54 Mr Bacon: The second set of accounts
was of course unqualified.
Mr Green: They were.
Q55 Mr Bacon: And you are expecting
that the next set will be unqualified as well.
Mr Green: We are very hopeful
and we have no information to the contrary.
Q56 Keith Hill: I feel almost sorry
for Mr Green, having been a prosecutor for so many years and now
subject to the forensic cross-questioning of my colleague Mr Bacon;
not for nothing is he known as the Perry Mason of the PAC. I would
like to revert to this issue of counsel fee expenditure and this
extraordinary business about late submission; why so late?
Mr Green: The problem was that
it continued exactly as it had always been. Because of lack of
materiality counsel would get the brief, he would do the work
and you could not estimate on day one how much work counsel would
actually have to do from receipt of the brief until the end of
the trial.
Q57 Keith Hill: Why was it in their
interest to submit these things such a long time after the trials
had taken place?
Mr Green: You would have to ask
them, I do not know, but barristers tend to be—
Q58 Keith Hill: Is it for tax purposes?
Mr Green: No, not any more because
it is on an ongoing basis now.
Q59 Keith Hill: Given that in some
cases these fees are submitted up to three years after the trial,
how would it have been possible in those circumstances for case
managers to challenge these fee notes robustly?
Mr Green: Under the old system?
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