Home Affairs Committee Seminar - Review of Private Investigators

Insight Investigations yesterday attended the Home Affairs Committee Seminar at Portcullis House, Westminster to discuss regulation of the private investigator industry and also listen to guest speakers around related issues.

Following a turbulent past 12 months in the private investigator industry, it now seems that the Government are taking real measures and steps to try and progress the drawn out issue of private investigator licensing.

Insight Investigations, a leading detective agency have attended two meetings in the past couple of weeks alone with key Government figures and other private investigators to discuss this issue and also to suggest the best way forwards for the industry in terms of licensing.

Yesterday's seminar included a key note speech from former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas and there was also an opening speech from MP Keith Vas, Chairman of the Select Committe.

One extremely interesting factor of the seminar was that Paul Woolwich of Channel 4 gave an insight into a year long operation into the private investigator industry that was broadcast yesterday evening on Channel 4; Watching the Detectives.

Mr Woolwich discussed directly how two private investigation agencies had been supplying private data to a fictitious business that included private banking data and also personal phone records. It was mentioned to all atendees how easy it had been to get this data by hiring the two agencies and that it highlights the rogue element of the private investigator industry.

Programmes such as Watching the Detectives are obviously created and broadcast to expose the negative side to any particular sector, it is a shame however that an industry that is working so hard to bring in regulation is getting more negative attention.

In summary of the seminar, Insight and other attending parties agreed that regulation of the private investigator industry needs to be seriously considered and all options and factors of how to best govern the sector need to be considered before a final decision is taken.

We can only hope that it is the right one and that regulation will not be in the too distant future.

For more information regarding legitimate private investigator services please visit http://www.investigate.co.uk.

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