Doncaster v R

Evidence of earlier dealings with the Revenue may be admitted as bad-character evidence where it is needed to understand the later investigation or is relevant to disputed honesty, propensity or credibility. Its age does not make admission unfair where the earlier and later conduct form a connected history.

Local tax inspectors conducting civil enquiries into tax liabilities are not ordinarily persons charged with investigating offences for the purposes of the PACE Codes. However, evidence obtained near the point at which a criminal referral should occur remains subject to exclusion for unfairness. Lies and partial disclosures made in a continuing course of deception do not attract the protection afforded to confessions.

The appellant, a used-car dealer, was convicted at Portsmouth Crown Court of cheating the public revenue and two counts of false accounting. The prosecution alleged that he had concealed turnover, evaded VAT registration, used false invoices and falsely omitted bank and building-society assets from statements supplied during tax enquiries.

He accepted extensive non-disclosure and lying, but denied dishonesty in the offences charged. His appeal challenged the admission of evidence from earlier tax enquiries, the applicability of PACE, the absence of a good-character direction, the sufficiency of the evidence on the false-accounting counts, and the admission of documents during cross-examination.

1. Appeal dismissed. The court upheld the admission of evidence about the first two tax enquiries under Criminal Justice Act 2003 gateways for important explanatory evidence and for an important matter in issue. The enquiries formed a connected history relevant to whether the appellant dealt dishonestly with the Revenue and whether his account was truthful. Their age did not make their admission unfair.

2. Once bad-character evidence is admissible through a statutory gateway, the jury may give it significance in any respect in which it is relevant. The appellant’s admissions that he had lied in earlier enquiries did not remove dishonesty from issue, since he maintained that the charged tax returns and statements of assets had been honestly made.

3. Local tax inspectors investigating and settling civil tax liabilities were not persons charged with investigating offences within section 67(9) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Officers of the Special Compliance Office occupied a different position. A civil enquiry close to the point of criminal referral might nevertheless create unfairness requiring exclusion under sections 76 or 78.

4. On the facts, the appellant had not confessed to any charged offence. His partial admissions were part of a continuing course of lies and concealment. Section 76 did not protect those lies as confessions, and admission of the evidence was not unfair under section 78 or article 6.

5. The judge was entitled not to give a standard good-character direction after bad-character evidence had properly been admitted on propensity and credibility. Although the jury should at least have been reminded that the appellant had no previous convictions, any omission could not affect the safety of the convictions. The court also suggested that, in an appropriate case, a modified direction may leave the jury to weigh the absence of convictions against admitted bad-character evidence.

6. The trial judge correctly left to the jury whether the statements of assets, required by the Revenue for settlement purposes, were documents required for an accounting purpose. He also had discretion to admit company accounts during cross-examination after the appellant unexpectedly relied on alleged rental income; the documents came from the appellant and directly contradicted that new assertion.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — the appeal against conviction was dismissed in [2008] EWCA Crim 5; renewed applications for leave to add two further grounds were refused.
• Crown Court at Portsmouth — on 7 February 2007, the appellant was convicted of cheating the public revenue and two counts of false accounting, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.