R (Lord, Reynolds and Mayger) v Serious Fraud Office

The Divisional Court has ruled that the Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”) acted lawfully in refusing to permit three senior employees in GlaxoSmithKline Plc (“GSK”) to be accompanied, at interviews with the SFO in an ongoing corruption inquiry, by lawyers acting for GSK.  The three employees brought judicial review proceedings alleging that the SFO’s refusal (i) had breached a common law right to be accompanied by a lawyer of their choice at the interviews, (ii) was contrary to the SFO’s policy, and (iii) was irrational.  Davis LJ, with whom Foskett J agreed, rejected each of these grounds of challenge as unarguable.  The point of particular significance is that the Divisional Court held it to be unarguable that the common law conferred any right for a person to be accompanied by a lawyer at a SFO interview.  If such a right was to exist, it needed to be created by Parliament; and it was “…quite apparent from the actual provisions of the 1987 Act that no such right is conferred on those subjected to a section 2 interview” (para 9).

The full judgment can be read here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/865.html

Pushpinder Saini QC and James Segan represented the Director of the Serious Fraud Office.