NEWS – “WITH COMMENT”
Following the SKY NEWS Article which bundled PI’s in with “criminals, proxy groups & misfits”
I have written to both SKY and the Home Secretary, as below.
If you too feel aggrieved at the bundling of Private Investigators in with “criminals, proxy groups and misfits”
Please write or email appropriately to both the Home Office and SKY.
The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP
The Home Office
Direct Communications Unit
2 Marsham Street London SW1P 4DF
Editor-in-chief,
Sky News, Sky Studios, Grant Way, Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 5QD.
Dear Home Secretary and Editor-in-chief, Sky News
On behalf of the World Association of Professional Investigators (WAPI) and the wider Investigator Sector across the U.K. I wish to complain strenuously over the Sky News reported comments of the Home Secretary in so much as the ‘bundling’ of Private Investigators in with criminals, proxy groups and misfits in your article of May 19, 2025.By Duncan Gardham, security journalist on Monday 19 May 2025 18:08, UK
The home secretary has pledged to introduce new powers to ban foreign intelligence agencies seeking to recruit “criminals, proxy groups, misfits and private investigators” in the UK.
Yvette Cooper said the government would emulate counter-terrorism legislation to plug gaps in areas including proscription to ban organisations such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).
If indeed, the Home Secretary used these terms, it is not only grossly inaccurate, but highly insulting to an entire profession deemed as an essential element in the legal process across the country.
We and other PI Associations have been pressing and lobbying for regulation for many years, whilst successive governments failed and continue to fail to take the most rudimentary steps to licence the sector.
PI’s rather like journalists are left to their own devices to investigate and report, primarily to solicitors for litigation purposes, as gatherers of independent evidence.
Many of us are members of one or more of the professional associations in the Uk, all of which require full compliance with all applicable law and ethics.
We are aware, and as an association, have circulated the details of the new legislation to our own members, and to the sector in general (see below)
National Security Act 2023
FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS & THEIR AGENCIES:
The Home Office has published new guidance to support the security industry, including but not limited to those who work in private investigation, close protection, or advise on corporate security and risk, to understand where they may be at risk of committing an offence under the National Security Act 2023.
This guidance has been issued on GOV.UK to ensure it is available to all security professionals and representative bodies. You can find the guidance here
The misrepresentation of our sector in this way is highly damaging, totally unnecessary, and very offensive. Be it the Home Secretary or an over-eager journalist dramatizing their work-product, I do hope that an appropriate apology may be forthcoming.
Yours sincerely
Posted by: Ian (D. Withers)
www.WAPI.com