Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR DAVID
GREEN QC
21 MAY 2008
Q60 Keith Hill: Yes; I acknowledge
that the system has been changed.
Mr Green: To an extent, obviously,
it would rest on the honesty of counsel putting in the proper
hours for what they had done; secondly, it would rest on the experience
of the individual prosecuting lawyer within the Customs and Excise
Prosecutions Office as was; thirdly, it would rest with the fees
and nominations team who had amongst their number one of the most
experienced people in terms of assessing fee notes and knowing
how much sort of work, roughly, any particular case would require.
Q61 Keith Hill: They are submitting
their fee notes more promptly nowadays; are they still submitting
grossly inflated demands?
Mr Green: Now the system works
in this way, that at the beginning of a large case—we are
talking just about our biggest cases, our MTIC frauds and so forth
or very large-scale drug importations—counsel would be called
in for a conference with one of our prosecuting lawyers and the
amount of work to be done roughly under various headings would
be worked out. I designed this as a poacher turned gamekeeper,
I know what work has to be done, so that would be done and then
during the trial the same process would continue, there would
be monthly meetings of how much work you need next month and at
the end of that month a bill has to be sent in. I have told our
counsel, and I keep on banging away saying it, that the day will
come when those who do not comply with our new fee arrangements
will not be instructed by us.
Q62 Keith Hill: Ah ha, what about
those who you found to be making unreasonably inflated claims
in the past, have you disposed of their services?
Mr Green: I am not quite sure
what you would be referring to.
Q63 Keith Hill: I am referring to
the case reported by the NAO where you received in October 2006
a fee note for £991,000 which when you, thank heavens, challenged
it was reduced to £550,000. That firm was obviously trying
to pull an excessively large fast one, was it not, in terms of
their services?
Mr Green: That was not a firm;
that was an individual barrister.
Q64 Keith Hill: Was it?
Mr Green: In that case it is hard
to say that that claim was improper or that it was inflated. His
clerk would probably say that is perfectly reasonable, we say
no it is not and so we, as it were, taxed it down. There was a
process of negotiation then which had gone on, certainly when
I was instructed by Customs and Excise.
Q65 Keith Hill: I am not going to
ask the name of this barrister or indeed his educational background,
though others may, but can I ask if you still use this barrister?
Mr Green: Yes, he has been used
since.
Q66 Keith Hill: Even though he claimed
double what you deemed was a reasonable amount of money to give
him for his services.
Mr Green: That is the point, Mr
Hill, that is what we deemed reasonable, his clerk doubtless deemed
it not reasonable and thought his demand was perfectly reasonable.
The point is that it was in those days, under that system, subject
to negotiation between counsel's clerk and the fee-paying authority.
The whole point of our new system is that we have removed negotiation
from the system, it cannot happen any more.
Q67 Keith Hill: Well done on that.
You inherited this unsatisfactory system but it still took you
18 months to put it right; why did it take you 18 months?
Mr Green: It was first brought
to my attention as a problem by the National Audit Office in November
2005. You cannot design a new fee system overnight and it took
us some time to put together a three category new fee structure
and to get the details out to counsel and to educate counsel's
clerks and so forth. It is a process we are still doing, Mr Hill,
but it certainly works a lot better and you will have noticed
from the overall fee figures paid to counsel over the last few
years that the figures are far more in control and have actually
been going down. I would like to think that that is because we
are managing these costs better.
Q68 Keith Hill: Finally, what techniques
do you use to satisfy yourself that the new system is working
properly?
Mr Green: We dip sample; the finance
department polices the process pretty carefully; we have our own
quality assurance within our department and certainly it is the
responsibility of each divisional head within my organisation
to police that function. It is not perfect though, Mr Hill, but
we are a very long way down the road and I am confident that great
improvements have been made.
Q69 Chairman: This barrister who
put in a fee note for £991,000, how many days work did he
do for this?
Mr Green: I do not know but it
was a huge MTIC fraud—missing trader intra-Community fraud—that
took a very long time—
Q70 Chairman: But it is a huge bill
too,
Mr Green: Yes, indeed. There are
not many people, Chairman, at the criminal Bar who are capable
of doing this kind of prosecution.
Q71 Chairman: Was it a year's work,
two years' work?
Mr Green: I think it was well
over a year's work and of course—
Q72 Chairman: Say it was a year's
work, it is still the best part of a million quid for a year's
work.
Mr Green: There were then two
long trials.
Q73 Chairman: Why should the taxpayer
pay these people this kind of money?
Mr Green: We were not, that is
the point, it was halved.
Q74 Chairman: You still paid him
half a million.
Mr Green: Chairman, as I say there
are not many people—our fee rates are not astronomical.
We pay a silk now £185 an hour for criminal work and that
compares pretty well with any other prosecuting authority. We
are a specialist prosecuting authority, we do not do punch-ups
in pubs, I cannot have just anybody doing these cases. We look
to experts at the Bar, that is why we use certain silks, why we
use our standing counsel and why we use the Attorney-General's
unified list of approved prosecution counsel.
Q75 Chairman: He would not have done
any other work pretty well during this entire year.
Mr Green: I have no idea. I can
send you the details.
Q76 Chairman: You must have an idea;
you worked in this business for 25 years.
Mr Green: I am sorry, I am reminded
it is actually three years' work from when he was first briefed
until the end of the trial. It was a huge project, these MTIC
frauds are enormous and very complex to prosecute,
Q77 Chairman: It would be quite interesting
for us if you could send us a note on this. We would like to know
exactly how much work he did do to give us an idea of how much
you are paying now.[2]
Mr Green: Certainly, we will let
you know.
Q78 Nigel Griffiths: We get reports
from the National Audit Office, Mr Green, where sometimes you
look at them and you think yum-yum, a dripping roast of evidence,
and I have to say I am somewhat disappointed with the clarity
of your responses as to some of it, and I want to pursue that
in three areas: one is the Chief Operating Officer. If the Chief
Operating Officer had disclosed more would he have avoided being
dismissed?
Mr Green: If he had disclosed
more?
Q79 Nigel Griffiths: Yes. The reason
I ask you that is because what appears to anyone reading this
is that it is an absolute horror story.
Mr Green: Yes.
2 Ev 17 Back
| 
