That was evidence enough for Allcock to serve them with a joint demand for income tax

That was evidence enough for Allcock to serve them with a joint demand for income tax.He told the court that years later, as head of the task-force nicknamed the Ghostbusters, because they inquired into "spooks" - wealthy foreigners who claimed non- resident status and admitted no tax liability here - he sanctioned a highly speculative approach to the offices of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.Inland Revenue investigators asked the town hall to supply a list of names of all those who qualified for resident's parking permits. Allcock knew that the local authority was under no obligation to comply with the cheeky request. But it did."If you don't ask, you won't get," was the philosophy Allcock brought with him when he first began work at the anonymous office building off Borough High Street, Southwark, that housed the SO2 operation."I was shown to a room where there was a desk and a telephone and told to get on with it," he said "I was told we were the last line of defence. If we did not collect tax from these individuals, no one would."It was in this climate that the Inland Revenue set Allcock running on the Stock Exchange Project. In 1986, the year of Big Bang, the liberalisation of trading rules in the City of London, a series of press stories alleged that a growing number of City brokers and dealers were making millions from insider deals with the undeclared profits being siphoned off into offshore "brass plate" companies.Allcock used a friend of his wife, who he knew worked in the Exchange, to arrange an informal invitation. Without declaring his professional interest, he went out to lunch with his new friends and what he learnt startled him Later, he told colleagues: "I was gobsmacked.

There was one guy there saying I had a bad morning, I only made pounds 60,000 for my Jersey company. I could not believe what I was hearing."Allcock pursued his new contacts in the City in a way no tax inspector had ever before His arrival on the scene met a need. The Stock Market's insider-dealing team was under growing pressure to clean up some of the market's potentially most embarrassing cheats, and on as many as 50 previous occasions their own investigators had drawn a blank when the trail they were following led to offshore tax havens.Allcock arrived at the Exchange complete with a Section 20 notice, which officially gave him the power to demand the production of share-dealing information. The Stock Exchange indicated the dealers thought to be most guilty of insider dealing, and sat back.

The Inland Revenue men did the rest - trying to get their hands on undeclared capital gains of cash shipped quietly out to offshore tax havens. If brokers and dealers refused to name the beneficial owners of the offshore companies where they deposited the share dealing profits, he threatened to make dealers personally liable for the unpaid tax. He got results.Allcock's Stock Exchange work was to undo him. John Black, for the prosecution at his trial, said: "He was gradually corrupted by the huge wealth he saw before him."Things were also going wrong in his private life - his wife had a malignant breast tumour, and he had started a sexual relationship with an escort girl - but he was still bringing in millions for the Exchequer. There were no special rules or guidelines restricting the way the SO investigators should set about their business and for Allcock it was very much a case of the ends justifying the means If he picked up some bonuses along the way, so be it.. JThe Prime Minister said yesterday that he hoped the killers of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was stabbed to death at a bus stop in London, could still be jailed. His comments follow an inquest which found that Mr Lawrence, 18, had been unlawfully killed four years ago "in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths". The Daily Mail provoked a general furore and outrage among many leading legal figures after it printed the names and photographs of five unconvicted young white men and accused them of being the murderers.Three of the five, from south-east London, cannot be tried for Mr Lawrence's murder as they have already been acquitted and under British law cannot face the same charge.Speaking at Commons question time, John Major told MPs: "I hope even at this stage that it will be possible to mount a successful prosecution If evidence is forthcoming, it will be examined.

There is no lack of will to prosecute."He is understood to have been making a general comment about his desire for justice to be done, rather than talking about any specific suspects.His comments came after Mr Lawrence's mother, Doreen, speaking yesterday at the launch of the 1997 European Year Against Racism, urged people to join the campaign to bring his killers to trial.The Prime Minister went on to say the Daily Mail was cleared of any statutory contempt after it accused the five white men of Mr Lawrence's murder.He said: "I'm not myself a lawyer, but I understand there's no question of statutory contempt as a result of the activities of the Daily Mail.". Publicans from all over the country are holding a conference in London today in an attempt to head off what they claim is a serious threat to thousands of Britain's pubs. They will lobby MPs and brewers over restrictions on tied houses which are driving their costs up and many of their colleagues, like David and Joan Cassidy (pictured, right) - who run the Market Street Tavern in Radcliffe, near Manchester - to the brink of disaster. The Federation of Small Businesses is hosting the conference at Church House in Westminster, central London, to highlight the difficulties encountered since the big eight brewers were ordered by the Monopolies Commission to sell off 11,000 pubs in 1990.The federation says that the tenants of those tied pubs have to pay high rents and must buy beer from their brewers at full list price, whereas free houses get discounts of up to 25 per cent."The rent and beer prices are too high," said Mr Cassidy. "We owe our brewery [Matthew Brown] pounds 5,000 and we've only been here nine months.".

Compulsory genetic testing for insurance policyholders moved a step closer yesterday as the Association of British Insurers said that those who have already taken any such test will have to report its results to the company they want cover from. The ABI, the industry's trade body, insisted that the new policy reflected existing practice by its members. It said that companies would ignore the results of any genetic tests if they were part of an application to buy a house worth up to pounds 100,000. Tony Baker, the ABI's deputy director-general, said his organisation's policy was a "carefully considered and responsible contribution to ... new challenges".But some ABI members, who refused to be named, privately warned yesterday that the statement, which will remain in place for two years, was "the thin end of the wedge".