History of the UK Customs Service

In the Kingdom of England, customs duties were typically part of the customary revenue of the king, and therefore did not need parliamentary consent to be levied, unlike excise duty, land tax, or other forms of taxes.

The Board of Customs, responsible for collecting His or Her Majesty's Customs, had a very long history. Originally, the term customs meant any customary payments or duties of any kind (for example, to the king, or a bishop, or the church), but later became restricted to duties payable to the king on the import or export of goods. The centralised English customs system can be traced to the Winchester Assize of 1203-4, in the reign of King John, from which time customs were to be collected and paid to the State Treasury. Legislation concerning customs can be traced to King Edward I. Under the nova custuma in 1275, Collectors of Customs were appointed by Royal patent and, in 1298, custodes custumae were appointed in certain ports to collect customs for the Crown. The first Customs officers were appointed in 1294, and later on included Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Paine, Robert Burns and Richard Whittington (also known as Dick Whittington).

A Board of Customs was effectively created by ordinance on 21 January 1643, under which the regulation of the collection of customs was entrusted to a parliamentary committee.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) (Welsh: Cyllid a Thollau Ei Mawrhydi), the part of Board of Customs, is a non-ministerial department of the British Government primarily responsible for the collection of taxes and the payment of some forms of state support.

HMRC was formed by a merger of the Inland Revenue and Her Majesty's Customs and Excise and came into formal existence on 18 April 2005. The department's logo is the St. Edward's Crown enclosed within a circle.

2.7.1. Answer the following questions:

1. What were the customs duties part of?

2. What was The Board of Customs responsible for?

3. What did the word "customs" mean originally?

4. What events happened in 1275 and 1298?

5. When was HMRC founded?

6. What is HMRC responcible for?

2.8. Grammar Assignments.

2.8.1. Find in the texts some sentences in the Active Voice, copy them into your exercise books, give simple grammar analysis of these sentences.

2.8.2. Find in the text some sentences in the Passive Voice, copy them into your exercise books, give simple grammar analysis of these sentences.

2.8.3. Find in the text sentences with the Participles and define their forms and functions. See Grammar in Use section if necessary.

2.8.4. Read the following text and fill in the gaps with suitable words given below:

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mission Statement

We are the ….. of our Nation's borders. We are America's frontline.

We …… the American homeland at and …….. our borders.

We …… the American public against terrorists and the instruments of terror.

We steadfastly enforce the laws of the United States while our Nation's economic security through lawful international trade and travel.

We serve the American public with ….., integrity and professionalism.

safeguard guardians beyond protect fostering vigilance

2.8.5. Use the verbs given in brackets in Past Simple to complete the text:

History of Russian Passports and Citizenship

In the 16th–17th centuries it 1) (be) necessary to obtain a special document from the tsar which 2) (give) permission to go abroad, since departure from the country was strictly limited. During the reign of Peter the Great hundreds of young Russians 3) (go) to Western Europe to study. But by the end of the epoch of Catherine the Great, the State put a lot of obstacles to foreign travel because of the fear of revolutionary ideas that 4) (can) come from Europe.

Nicholas I 5) (forbid) the education of children abroad and, consequently, created lots of work for foreign teachers in Russia. It was only Alexander II who
6) (allow) youths to study abroad after reaching age 17. Other restrictions were cancelled in 1881. Young people under age 20 were allowed to leave Russia only if they 7) (have) serious reasons to go, such as education, medical treatment or trade. The Russian Empire had no domestic passports. They 8) (be) made only for travel abroad and were valid for 5 years. Every 6 years anyone, who was absent from Russia, had to pay a tax, equal to 15 roubles.

2.8.6. Put the verbs in brackets using ing-forms or Participle II:

Soviet period

After 1917 the practice of 1) (issue) passports for travel abroad remained the same. They were valid for 6 months and then could be 2) (prolong) for an-other half a year or even a longer period but only by special solicitation. The control over all those who crowed the border was very strict. 3) (accord) to the Rules 4) (adopt) in 1922, one could go abroad only by permission of a special governmental department.

At the same time, 5) (gain) the Russian citizenship in 1918 was very simple: a man needed only to apply to the Department of Foreign Affairs. It was only in 1921 that the government took away the citizenship of all those people who had left the country before the revolution and who had been living abroad for five years.

The USSR was created in 1922 and in 1924 Soviet citizenship was introduced. Passports were 6) (give) only to those who went abroad. In 1925 three types of documents appeared: diplomatic passports (green), official ones (for those who went abroad for business, they were blue) and passports for other citizens (red).This system was 7) (maintain) almost till the end of the 20th century. The situation 8) (concern) domestic passports is also worthy of our attention. After 1917 everybody's identity could be 9) (establish) by any document with a photo and a stamp. Until 1923 issuing such documents was a very simple process: every governmental organization had the right lo prepare them. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1920s this anarchy could not be supported anymore and a special commission was 10) (create). The government aimed at resolving three problems at the same time. First of all, to not allow people 11) (live) in the countryside to leave their homes, secondly, to do the same with people m cities and, finally, to control and persecute "enemies" of the Soviet regime.

But passports were not given to everyone: only lo inhabitants of cities,workers, and those who lived in a sovkhoz: People in the countryside had nopassport and were 12) (prohibit) to leave their village for more than five days.

Citizens who were living abroad would not take their interior passports with them. If somebody planned to leave forever, he had to give his documents to a special department.

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