His wife first became ill in 1988 and it was shortly after this that he and his wife

His wife first became ill in 1988 and it was shortly after this that he and his wife took two holidays paid for by a businessman from the Middle East.But Mr Allcock denies this was bribery, as the businessman had no tax liability at the time of the holidays and only funded the trips out of generosity and in order to aid Mrs Allcock's recuperation.Having left school at 16 with only five O-levels, Mr Allcock's rise to the senior position of group leader within the Inland Revenue had been spectacular.He joined the Colchester district tax office in 1966. Trained and qualified as a tax inspector, he was spotted as a recruit for the elite special- office team based in London in 1983. "Special office was an investigative office set up to investigate avoidance and evasion of tax not appropriate to any other office," said Mr Allcock."I was told that we were the bottom line. When I started, I was given an empty desk and a telephone and told to get on with it. We were told to set our own agenda, we were the cutting edge and our rules and procedures were outside normal rules and procedures."Special-office investigators were encouraged to go and cultivate their own sources of intelligence and information.

Soon after starting at the special office, Mr Allcock used an acquaintance of his wife to arrange an informal visit to the Stock Exchange.Mr Allcock's outgoing personality helped him form a number of personal relationships with Stock Exchange officials that led to a mutually beneficial co-operation between the Revenue and market regulators.These contacts set Mr Allcock and his team on a series of trails that were eventually to net the Inland Revenue many millions of pounds in unpaid taxes.One of the charges against the taxman relates to his receiving or accepting pounds 155,000 in cash in bribes from foreign businessmen. For the defence, Mr Arlidge argued that Mr Allcock would give evidence to explain how he came by the money.Mr Arlidge told the jury that a childless elderly couple gave substantial sums of money to Mr Allcock and his wife Sally. "They came to regard Sally as the daughter they never had," said Mr Arlidge.Mr Allcock, 47, from Colchester, Essex, pleads not guilty to 11 charges of bribery and corruption between 1987 and 1992. Hishan Alwan, 56, a consultant oil dealer from west London, denies three charges of attempting to bribe the Inland Revenue official.The trial continues..

Government-backed doubling of court costs for people involved in civil disputes was condemned as "thoroughly object- ionable and reprehensible" yesterday by the head of the civil justice system. Sir Richard Scott said there was a danger that the policy, part of a plan to make civil justice pay for itself, would deter people from using the courts. But people could not take the law into their own hands, which would cause "chaos", he added. The increases of up to 150 per cent, which come into force on Wednesday, affect fees for all civil court actions, from divorce to debt recovery, rents and disputes between neighbours.The rises are the latest in a four-year drive to meet the costs of running civil courts. Some fees will be almost four times what they were 18 months ago, and some services used to be free.Sir Richard, head of the High Court Chancery division, said he had "no doubt" that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, had "no alternative but to increase court fees because of Treasury constraints on his budget".But of the danger of people being deterred from using the courts, he said: "Access to justice requires that justice should be reasonably accessible without excessive cost. Civil proceedings are already very expensive.Sir Richard said people could not "go and demand rents with threats", and could not solve boundary disputes by simply pulling up a fence.The new rises are intended to raise the fee income from court users to pounds 310m a year - almost the full cost of running civil courts.The fee for lodging trial papers and asking for a date in a county court, which was free until the 1980s, doubles from pounds 50 to pounds 100. The cost of a divorce petition, which was pounds 40 18 months ago, rises from pounds 80 to pounds 150.A spokeswoman for the Lord Chancellor's Department, said: "It has been Government policy since 1992 that the costs of the civil justice system should be recovered from court fees This is the final stage in this. People who are less well-off will still have their fees paid from the legal aid fund.