A COURT'S decision to let a corrupt civil servant off the hook for his part in a multi-million pound swindle has been criticised by Blackburn MP Jack Straw.

Gordon Foxley was jailed for four years in 1994 after taking bribes from foreign companies for lucrative contracts.

Foxley's deception led to 300 people losing their jobs at Blackburn's Royal Ordnance Factory.

Despite being ordered to pay £1.5million in compensation after the original case, Foxley never did.

And the High Court has now quashed an attempt by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to enforce the order because the judge ruled a fair trial was not possible after such a long delay.

Mr Straw, who described Foxley's action as "devastating" for the town, hit out at the CPS for the delay in chasing the cash.

He said: "As Blackburn's member of Parliament I'm very concerned about the fact that the confiscation order has not been enforced and now may never be, and I'm making inquiries about why this is so."

Foxley, now 82, has a large mansion in Oxfordshire which police believe was one of several properties bought from the procedes of his dodgy dealings.

His job of awarding the military contracts had a salary of around £25,000 and he has since claimed he has no assets.

At the time of his jailing, for which he only served two years of the sentence, a ruling stated that his house would not be seized because Foxley had put it in his wife's name.

The MoD also took civil action against the three foreign arms companies, which paid £3.39million in an out of court settlement.

Deputy secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Jack Dromey, was unavailable for comment following the High Court order.

Mr Dromey called for former Royal Ordnance workers to benefit from the cash Foxley had originally been ordered to repay.