Business secretary Vince Cable is to begin a probe into the administrators of Comet, more than 18 months after the electrical retailer went into administration with the loss of 7,000 jobs.

Three partners in Deloitte are under investigation in the probe as to whether they breached accounting guidelines: a possible conflict of interest as Deloitte acted for Comet before its insolvency as well as being its administrator and because they “failed to consult the chain's employees properly” during the redundancy process. An employment tribunal recently announced that over 2,000 Comet staff should receive around £10m in redundancy payments.