Investigating the company you keep

Company Investigations and public lawAndrew LidbetterHart Publishing, 65Peter wilson

If ever there was a specialist work then this is it.

The book concentrates exclusively on investigations of companies under the Companies Act 1985, Financial Services Act 1986 and the Insurance Companies Act 1982, analysing such investigations in a public law context.

It does not attempt to fulfil a wider role as a general guide to the varied threats which companies face, against the backdrop of increasing governmental regulation of commercial affairs.

It is too narrow in its focus.If a client company is being investigated, for example, by inspectors appointed by the secretary of state, then the book is invaluable.

It gives a blow-by-blow guide to each stage of an investigation, informing the reader when, why and how it can be challenged or at least well managed.As a 'good read', I struggled for the first few chapters.

There were so many quotes from or references to the Investigations Handbook published by the Department of Trade and Industry, that I almost gave up and read the handbook instead.

I also found that the author's tendency to recite many of the statutory provisions word for word made cover-to-cover reading difficult.

As a reference work, using the statutory language obviously means greater accuracy, but it is certainly not very enthralling.

That said, I warmed to the work when the author got stuck into the case law.

His discussion of an inspector's power to demand answers to questions and the subsequent use which can be made of such material in a prosecution was particularly fascinating.He provides a very clear explanation of the contrast between, on the one hand, the approach of the European Court of Human Rights (in Saunders v United Kingdom) which condemned the use of such material as a breach of Article 6(1) (right to a fair trial) and, on the other, the approach of the domestic courts in R v Seeling, R v Spens and R v Saunders.

The domestic law view is that where a person interviewed by inspectors is compelled to give answers, and those answers tend to be self-incriminating, broadly speaking, they can be used in a subsequent prosecution (without regard to the privilege against self-incrimination) as the inspectors' role is deemed to be inquisitorial not accusatory.Mr Lidbetter develops the matter further and queries whether the Human Rights Act 1998 will have an impact.

My response to that is one of anticipation as I look forward to seeing the second edition of this book soon after 1 October 2000 when the Act comes into force.Peter Wilson is a partner in the dispute resolution department of City law firm Tarlo Lyons