Stay of proceedings - disqualification proceedings - criminal proceedings arising out of same facts - concurrent proceedings not unfair to defendantSecretary of State for Trade and Industry v Crane and Another: ChD (Mr Justice Ferris):11 April 2001Prior to the hearing of the disqualification proceedings against the defendants, a police officer wrote to the defendants' solicitor requesting that the defendants attend a police station on a certain date in order that they might be charged with various offences.

The defendants did not attend.

A police officer attended the first day of the disqualification proceedings and, when asked by the registrar, indicated that the police intended to prosecute offences arising in connection with the subject matter of the disqualification proceedings, also that he was attending court to see if anything would emerge which would assist in the proposed prosecution.

The registrar made an order staying the disqualification proceedings pending the resolution of the criminal proceedings.

The secretary of state appealed.Philip Jones and Gregory Banner (instructed by Howes Percival, Norwich) for the secretary of state; Paul Girolami (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) as amicus curiae; the defendants did not appear and were not represented.Held, allowing the appeal and discharging the stay, that the so-called 'right of silence' afforded to a person facing a criminal charge did not extend to give a defendant as a matter of right the same protection in contemporaneous civil proceedings, although the court which was competent to control the civil proceedings had a jurisdiction to stay the proceedings if it appears that justice so requires, having regard to the concurrent proceedings; that the primary responsibility for doing justice in the criminal proceedings lay with the criminal court, which had extensive powers of its own, fir example by excluding evidence by operation of section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984; that the new section 20(2) of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 meant that evidence relating to any statement made in the course of disqualification proceedings could not be adduced by the prosecution in any subsequent criminal proceedings, though it could be relied upon by the defence; and that, subject to the new section 20(2), there was nothing in either the general law or in article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights which made it objectionable for a prosecuting authority to obtain helpful ideas from what was said in other proceedings concerning the same subject matter.