WE are living in what is rapidly turning into a police state. How else do you account for what has happened to Mrs Kim Cundle, a mother of four, whose car was seized by customs officers and sold at auction?

Her crime? Heroin smuggling, perhaps? Giving a free ride to half a dozen illegal immigrants? Not a bit of it. Mrs Cundle was approaching her 40th birthday and she decided she would take the car to France and stock up on drink for a big party. That's all. Nothing illegal about what she did. We are allowed by law to go across to Europe and buy cigarettes and drink for our own domestic consumption at the cheaper prices charged over there.

That's what Mrs Cundle did - except she didn't even bother to buy cigarettes at all. I started by saying we are becoming a police state. But it wasn't even policemen who confiscated Mrs Cundle's car; merely customs officers.

Last July the High Court issued a ruling which said the customs officers must not take such a hard line with people who bring in drink for their own consumption. This High Court ruling is being blatantly ignored by customs officers at English ports every day.

Mrs Cundle has appealed. To no avail. Her car was still sold off at auction. Her solicitor said: "I find it incredible that they proceeded to sell Mrs Cundle's car while she is still appealing. It seems to me the customs officers are behaving quite illegally".

In fact, the whole system is rigged against the honest shopper. Customs do not have to offer any specific evidence that a traveller whose goods are seized is a smuggler. And, once the traveller's car has been impounded, they don't have to say on which day it is to be auctioned. Now do you believe me when I say we are turning into a police state in which operates a corrupt and mean-spirited bureaucracy, persecuting honest people going about their lawful business?

Of course, this lamentable event raises another issue of a more general sort: just why do booze and fags cost two or three times as much in Britain as they cost on the continent? I thought the policy of the EU long since recommended standard duties on goods. But have you noticed, every time the EU issues an edict which is to the disadvantage of British people, our government positively races to enforce it? But whenever - rarely enough - there is enacted or recommended a policy that is to the advantage of honest Englishmen, the government refuses to support it.

What next in our incipient police state, our Orwellian dystopia? Why let the customs officers only have all these police powers? What about the traffic wardens? Surely EU equal opportunities legislation says that they too should be allowed to arrest people and confiscate their goods. I can just see the day when I pop out to the supermarket to buy two tins of pilchards and a bottle of plonk, only to have my shopping trolley impounded and my Tesco Club Card confiscated.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and chaplain to the Stock Exchange.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.u