A PREVIOUSLY law-abiding family man caught smuggling £1.5 million of cocaine has failed to persuade top judges his 14-year sentence was too long.

Jamie Buxton had never been in trouble with the law before and "enjoyed a stable family life with his wife and children" before agreeing to act as a drugs courier, London's Criminal Appeal Court heard yesterday.

Buxton, of Regency Drive, Stockton Brook, was stopped by customs officers at Dover on June 6 last year.

He told them he was acting as a stand-in van driver, having delivered metal sheets to Belgium. He said he was bringing back exhaust brackets.

Officers found the van did contain car parts, but hidden underneath were nine packages of powder, containing 6.48kg of pure cocaine, with a street value of more than £1.5 million.

Buxton, aged 38, was arrested and claimed to know nothing about the drugs, insisting he had not packed the van.

But he was convicted of importing cocaine and handed the jail term at Canterbury Crown Court on April 28.

Yesterday, Lord Justice Moore-Bick, sitting with Mr Justice Griffith Williams and Judge Elgan Edwards, heard his appeal against the length of that sentence.

Buxton's lawyers argued he should have received a lesser sentence because of his previous good character and suggested he might have been "set up" and "sacrificed" to customs by a drugs gang, in order to provide a distraction and enable bigger smugglers to slip through.

Lord Justice Moore-Bick accepted the possibility, but said it did not impact on Buxton's culpability.

Dismissing the appeal, he said: "It is submitted he was used to draw customs officers away from others who were smuggling drugs.

"That may be so, but it doesn't affect his culpability. He was a vital cog in the machine as he was the one who brought the drugs into the country.

"A sentence of 14 years is severe, but, in the absence of a guilty plea, we don't think it can be regarded as excessive."