A LORRY driver caught trying to hide a drugs stash with a street value of more than £1 million in a cargo of apples has had his nine-year jail term cut on appeal by top judges.

Drugs mule Stephen Toner, aged 28, of Clougharevan Park, Bessbrook, Northern Ireland, has had his sentence reduced from nine to seven years.

He had what he thought were ecstasy pills worth £750,000, plus £500,000 worth of cannabis, hidden in the roof of his truck while picking up a cargo of fruit at Ferryfast Produce in Pershore on August 4 last year.

At the time police said they believed the stash was the biggest ever discovered in Worcestershire.

Eagle-eyed staff spotted the drugs while loading Toner’s trailer, when bags of pills came loose from the roof space.

They alerted police and Toner told officers the pills were ecstasy, although they turned out to be a mixture of a class C drug called TFMPP and harmless fakes.

Toner was jailed for nine years last September at Worcester Crown Court, after pleading guilty to attempted possession of ecstasy with intent to supply and possession of cannabis with intent to supply. He was also handed a six-year driving ban.

Yesterday, Lord Justice Jackson, Mr Justice Wilkie and Judge Brian Barker, sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, cut his jail term to seven years.

The court was told that Toner had intended to use the cover of the fruit delivery to take the drugs back for sale in Northern Ireland where street prices for drugs are much higher than in England.

Lawyers for Toner yesterday argued that the two consecutive sentences of four and five years he was handed for the two drug offences ought to have been made concurrent. Lord Justice Jackson, allowing his appeal, said that he was not prepared to go that far, but went on to cut two years off the total term, after ruling that the sum of the two sentences was too great, given the facts of the case and his mitigation.