Excise, Customs and International Trade Matters

An early announcement made by Mr Brown in his Budget speech was his intention to increase resources available to services such as Customs for their work at ports and airports connected with security matters and enhancing our response to a range of terrorist threats. This move will receive widespread support from the public and the media in the present climate. The debates over the deployment of customs personnel against cross-border shoppers in recent years had tended to obscure the highly valuable work which the customs service performs in contributing towards the maintenance of national security in the UK. The conviction...