Dame Barbara Mills, British barrister, Director of Public Prosecutions (1992–1998), died from a stroke he was , 70.

 Dame Barbara Jean Lyon Mills, née Warnock, DBE, QC was a British barrister died from a stroke he was , 70. . She held various senior public appointments including Director of Public Prosecutions. At the time of her death she was Chair of the Professional Oversight Board.




(10 August 1940 – 28 May 2011)

Career

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.
She was Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) from 1990 to 1992, and from 1992 to 1998 she was Director of Public Prosecutions, the first woman to hold that position. During that period, the SFO was investigating a company set up by her brother-in-law David Mills, then husband of Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, in connection with bribery allegations against Silvio Berlusconi, but declined to investigate Mills himself.^[2] David Mills was later found guilty of accepting a cash bribe from Berlusconi, but the conviction was quashed by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation.^[3][4]
She also served as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. During her term in this office, levels of bureaucracy in the CPS were high and morale was low.^[5] She resigned when criticised by the High Court for repeatedly refusing to bring prosecutions over deaths in police custody.^[6]
She was appointed as Adjudicator for Inland Revenue and for HM Customs and Excise on 26 April 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.^[7] When these bodies were merged she became the Adjudicator for HM Revenue and Customs on 18 April 2005, and held this post until 2009.^[1]

Personal life

She was married to John Mills from 1962 until her death.^[5] He is a successful businessman and former leading Councillor at Camden.^[2] She died on 28 May 2011 after suffering a stroke and is survived by her son and three daughters.^[5]

 

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