Should the British public be protected from private investigators by a regime of statutory regulation? That has been the issue raised in parliament by the Home Affairs Committee.
Last month the committee was making an inquiry into private investigators. It heard from John Conyngham, Group General Counsel and Global Director, Corporate Investigations, Control Risks; Bill Waite, Chief Executive Officer, Risk Advisory Group; and Tommy Helsby, Chairman, Kroll. Earlier the MPs heard from the industry associations: Tony Imossi, President, Association of British Investigators (ABI); Ian Hopkins, Board Member and Past President, Institute of Private Investigators (IPI); and Ian Withers, Governing Council Member, World Association of Professional Investigators (WAPI). The committee chair, the Labour MP Keith Vaz said: “Recent high profile events, such as the phone hacking scandal, have thrown light on the sometimes shady world of private investigators. Despite this the industry still remains entirely unregulated.” In written evidence to the committee published last month, the Home Office and the Security Industry Authority granted that the Private Security Industry Act 2001 provides for private investigators (PIs) to be badged. However they await the outcome of the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking, which also has heard about PIs. As for Northern Ireland, likewise the issue is ‘being considered’; in that region, ‘Northern Ireland officials will gather views as to whether private investigations should be subject to a compulsory regulation regime in Northern Ireland’. According to the published evidence, licensing of PIs was one agreed ‘priority’ for the SIA and Home Office in mid-2009, but the government department and regulator put it back to 2011 or 2012, among other reasons because of a lack of training to get PIs qualified. The SIA began ‘practical preparations’ for PI licensing before the 2010 election. That however brought in the Coalition, which soon sought to abolish or rein back quangos such as the SIA.
In another published statement, G4S described how it owns The Cotswold Group, to be renamed G4S Investigation Services this month. Its 350 investigators, working for 30 UK insurers, makes it the company claims the largest provider of surveillance and investigative services to insurance clients in the UK, mainly working on personal injury fraud. Options, it suggests are self-regulation as for private military-security companies ‘in complex environments’ (in plain English, war zones); or SIA-badging of individuals.
The firm added that PIs are ex-police; ex-military; or from ‘anywhere else’, which is the issue, as some may take advantage of the vulnerable (and take money from them). On client use of PIs to hack phones (as making the headlines at the Leveson inquiry) or otherwise blag such info as medical records, the firm did not comment directly but spoke of “customers, from large corporate to private individuals, who request information which is not readily or legally available but for which they are prepared to pay large sums of money, often in cash. This has created widespread bad practice among those PIs, whether corporate or individual, for whom basic business ethics are anathema”.
