[citation needed] Matrix Churchill was contacted by HM Customs and Excise, under suspicion of exporting arms components to Iraq without permission.
The trial judge overturned the government's use of public interest immunity certificates intended to suppress some critical evidence (purportedly on grounds of national security).
The trial collapsed when former minister Alan Clark admitted he had been 'economical with the actualité' in answer to parliamentary questions regarding what he knew about export licenses to Iraq.
Scott comments on the difficulty of extracting from departments the required documents (some 130,000 of them in all) and notes that Customs and Excise could not find out what Ministry of Defence export policy was, and that intelligence reports were not passed on to those who needed to know.
The Economist commented that "Sir Richard exposed an excessively secretive government machine, riddled with incompetence, slippery with the truth and willing to mislead Parliament".
It allowed the government to issue regulations that were not subject to resolution by Parliament, for the duration of the emergency, which made it a criminal offence to export particular goods to particular countries.
Scott says: The government is entirely frank in its desire to continue using "class" claims in order to protect communications between ministers and civil servants from disclosure in litigation.
In contrast, according to senior Labour MP Robin Cook, the opposition were given just two hours to read the million-plus words, during which scrutiny they were supervised and prevented from making copies of the report.