Policing minister's wife in legal row over claims of corporate espionage

A leading businesswoman who is married to the policing minister, Chris Philp, has been reported to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) by a former employer and is being sued in the high court over allegations of corporate espionage.

- Daniel Boffey

Elizabeth Philp, 40, whose husband has called for "zero tolerance" to all crime, is accused of data handling offences and unlawfully using "confidential information" from her former employer to set up a rival business.

She denies the allegations and is countersuing her former employer, which she accuses of cyber-attacking the website of the company she subsequently founded.

The legal tussle centres on the departure of Philp from the London Specialist Pharmacy Group (LSPG), where she was chief executive until 2017, and the founding of her own company, Roseway Labs. Her former employer has accused her of having stored and retained "trade secrets" on a Dell XPS laptop computer that was not wiped before she left the company.

It is further claimed that, with three other former LSPG employees, Philp conspired to poach her former employer's client lists for their new firm, leading to losses amounting to about £1.5m.

In Philp's defence and counterclaim, she denies the allegations and says a delay in carrying out a factory reset of her laptop was the result of being "fully involved in supporting her husband's campaign as part of the 8 June 2017 general election".