He told the court he believed a 2005 merger of the two agencies was intended to raise the legal standards, but he said: “I’m afraid standards have dropped.
“Nowadays, you have all sorts of so-called specialists who are quite sure they know everything about everything.
“They don’t take external advice and they don’t take internal advice.
“They are difficult to deal with, much more strong-headed, much more sure they are right, and I’m afraid the fusion of the two didn’t work out as planned.”
When the trial opened, Julian Christopher KC, the prosecutor, said Mr Venables had pitched himself in his career as an “adversary of HMRC”, representing taxpayers who were challenging the department over disputed tax bills.
Mr Venables is on trial over his annual self-assessments to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) between 2014 and 2021, when it is said he “falsely declared the amount of his income for taxation purposes”.
The court heard he channelled his earnings through a body called the RVQC Partnership, where he was the sole earner but the profits were distributed to partners, including himself, allegedly to lower his tax liability.
Money paid to his gardener and housekeeper is alleged to be part of the tax evasion.
Mr Venables, who denies the charges, told jurors he had good relations with some employees at HMRC during his career, and had even made supportive suggestions about greater transparency of tax avoidance schemes.
Humble beginnings
The South Yorkshire-born lawyer, who was Oxford-educated, said he came from a low-income background, raising pigs, hens, and ducks in the back garden to raise extra money.
Venables told jurors he grew up in a “Coronation Street house” – which was lit with candles and a gas lamp, heated by an open fire, and with just one cold running water tap.
His parents “put family first”, Mr Venables told the court, adding: “We may not have had much money but we actually didn’t feel deprived.
“I was about to start school just before my fifth birthday, and they sat me down and said to me ‘Robert, if you want anything in life, you have to work for it’.”
Mr Venables said he won a grammar school scholarship and went on to study classics at Merton College, Oxford.
During his university course, he worked as a postman, waiter, barman, and in a South Yorkshire iron foundry. He then pivoted towards law with a second two-year degree at Oxford.
He told jurors he was told during a failed attempt to be taken on as a barrister in Chambers that he was “a bit of a boffin” and lacked the necessary “social airs and graces”.
He said he visited an NHS speech therapist to improve the clarity of his speaking, and took night classes at the City Literary Institute which “taught me how to project my voice”.
After time as an Oxford academic, he said he had a “meteoric rise” in the legal profession once he had secured a place in Chambers. He added: “I started late, at 32, but it just went straight up.”
The trial continues.
