I read the letter from Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith QC with interest (see [2004] Gazette, 16 April, 14).

He suggests that under powers planned for the Serious Fraud Office, lawyers could be interrogated by Serious and Organised Crime Agency 'examiners', but offers reassurance that the current White Paper provides that communications subject to legal professional privilege will be protected from disclosure.

This is welcome, but the concession may be worth little in the light of the recent Court of Appeal decision in Three Rivers District Council v The Governor and Company of the Bank of England, (No 10) [2004] EWCA Civ 218, which strongly suggests that the scope of legal professional privilege in respect of inquiries or other investigative fora is now severely restricted.

Litigation privilege, it appears, is not available as such inquiries would not constitute 'adversarial proceedings' for the purposes of the CIvil Procedure Rule test in part 31.

Therefore, communi-cations between a witness's lawyer and experts or other advisers would not be privileged from production.

It also appears that legal advice privilege only applies to those communi-cations that are 'essential to the obtaining or giving of legal advice' in the strictest sense.

Any advice given to a witness by his lawyer outside these bounds would be disclosable.

Huw Wallis, White Case, London