The man who's changing the culture at Customs

A civil servant with an uncivil press

"Yes, Customs has come into the public eye lately," admits Richard Broadbent, the high-flyer who moved from Schroders, the investment bank, to run Customs & Excise two and a half years ago at the tender age of 46.

"The organisation has the most gigantic interface with the public – travellers, criminals, taxpayers – and it is not surprising when things go wrong, and occas- ionally they do, that it is highlighted. After all, we deal with half the tax revenue that is raised and a quarter of serious crime."

Broadbent was the first non-civil servant to became a permanent secretary and took on a 23,000-strong government department with a budget heading towards £1bn a year. This high profile has highlighted (more caught in the searchlight) the work of Customs, with The Sun especially taking pot shots at it.

From recent reports you'd have thought that Customs & Excise is a heartless, bureaucratic and possibly bent organisation, persecuting pensioners over a few hundred fags from Calais while drug smugglers flourish.

Perhaps more worrying for Broadbent is that he was brought in to sort out the bureaucratic behemoth. Tony Blair decided Customs needed a radical shake-up for its failure to tackle enormous revenue losses over our borders since we joined the EU in 1993.

Has Broadbent improved the organisation? A confident well-spoken man, he likes to bring private sector discipline to the public sector.

"You cannot change an organisation overnight. My own view is that we have done quite a lot. We have restructured the organisation. It was rather fragmented. There have been a lot of management changes. We have set out to analysethe problems and formulate strategies to deal with those problems."

Analysis leading to strategy is a constant theme in Broadbent's management method.

Born in 1953, he is a graduate of Queen Mary College and has an MA from Manchester University. He joined the civil service before moving to Schroders in 1986, where he rose to group managing director before returning to the Civil Service in 2000.

Broadbent proudly points to Customs' recent successes: "We have thwar-ted the growth of tobacco smuggling. We have stopped cross-channel smuggling. We are delivering results and I am happy to be measured on those results."

But what about drug smugglers? Haven't the traffickers won? Broadbent thinks not. "Our performance has significantly improved. We have seized more class-A drugs in the last three years than in the the previous 10." He says he is also spending much more money overseas to stop smuggling at source. "There is no point putting more officers at the borders randomly looking through containers. You have to know which container to open."

Customs' law enforcement role has increased fivefold in the last decade. "We are now responsible for tackling 25 per cent of serious crime," he says. He has revamped this element by putting a former MI6 officer, Paul Evans, in charge.

Broadbent claims that Customs' ability to react to new types of fraud and smuggling techniques has speeded up dramatically. He cites an agricultural fuel fraud. "We spotted the problem of oil fraud probably within 10 months of it taking off," he says.

There has also been a stream of stories about corruption investigations by the police into Customs & Excise. Last week the Attorney-General ordered a judicial inquiry into Customs after a trial involving a a team of its investigators had to be abandoned.

Broadbent's reply points to the period before he joined: "As you know, these things ... date back several years. However, I do not believe that in this organisation there is systemic corruption."

Customs is tasked with collecting about half the government's tax revenue. That includes £60bn in VAT and £45bn in other excise and duties. In last week's pre-Budget report, Gordon Brown outlined major plans to tackle VAT fraud, which are hoped to bring in an additional £2bn in VAT revenues by 2005-2006.

The Treasury also announced a new Customs strategy to it make easier for companies to pay their VAT, by extending the flat-rate scheme to businesses with an annual turnover of £150,000.

"The media spotlight can be uncomfortable, but ... it may be a function of the fact we are being more effective in tackling some of our problems," says Broadbent. "Customs is such a fascinating organisation. That's why I came here. I have not been disappointed."