Barbara Mills

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dame Barbara Jean Lyon Mills, DBE, QC (born 10 August 1940) is the Adjudicator for HM Revenue and Customs. She has held this post since it was created on April 18, 2005. Previously she was Adjudicator for HM Inland Revenue and for HM Customs and Excise, having been appointed on April 26, 1999. The Adjudicator is independent of HM Revenue & Customs, and deals with complaints from members of the public who are not satisfied with how their complaint is dealt with by that department.[1]

Previously she was the first woman to be Director of Public Prosecutions and the third head of the Crown Prosecution Service. During her term in this office levels of bureaucracy in the CPS were high and morale was low. She resigned when criticised by the High Court for repeatedly refusing to bring prosecutions over deaths in police custody.[2]

She was Director of the Serious Fraud Office from 1990 to 1992. In that period the SFO dropped a case it was building against David Mills, her brother-in-law. Mills is husband of New Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell and was embroiled in a scandal involving Jowel and he repeatedly remortgaging their home and paying it off with cash allegedly sourced to Silvio Berlusconi. A BBC documentary by John Sweeney alleged David Mills had created offshore vehicles for Camorra and Mafia interests. Barbara Mills is also sister in law to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.

She was educated at St.Helen's School, Northwood, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She was called to the Bar from the Middle Temple in 1963.