Our colleague David Williams, who has died aged 70, was an expert in both revenue law and social security law.
He was born in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, to Bill Williams, who worked in advertising after leaving the RAF, and his wife, Joan (nee Wallis). David attended Queen Elizabeth’s grammar school in Faversham, Kent, before studying law at Bristol University, where he took up his first academic post and qualified as a solicitor.
A gifted teacher and researcher, not to mention a loyal and supportive co-worker, he was headhunted by Manchester University, where he later became dean of law (1984-86), a role he reprised at Queen Mary and Westfield College (1991-93). His many publications included Social Security Taxation (1982), the first authoritative legal analysis of the national insurance contributions scheme, and Davies: Principles of Tax Law (with Geoffrey Morse, 1980), which is still a fixture on revenue law reading lists.
David had close links with tax scholars internationally and acted as a consultant both to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging nations (such as Sierra Leone, where he was once caught up in a military coup). He also advised on the Tax Law Rewrite Project, initiated by HMRC in 1997.
He was appointed as a part-time tribunal chairman in the early 1980s and left the academic world to become a social security and child support commissioner in 1998 (he was an upper tribunal judge from 2008). Unusually he had extensive experience of sitting both at first instance and on second-tier appeals in both the social security and tax jurisdictions. He combined his adherence to the judicial oath, to “do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will” with his passionate belief in all people being equal and being entitled to a fair start in life.
Although raised in Kent, David became an adopted Welshman on marrying Elisabeth (nee Jones Pierce) in 1968, typically going the extra mile by learning Welsh. After a nomadic academic life, the couple settled on the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales, where he enjoyed the great outdoors in his all too short retirement. He was a devoted husband, father and grandfather (or Taidy).
David is survived by Elisabeth and their three sons, Richard, Edward and Tom, and four grandchildren.