The House Article | Forensic science in England and Wales is failing the public

4 min read2 hr

Not for the police, not for forensic scientists, or lawyers and ultimately, it is not working for the public and the criminal justice system.

That’s what our recent House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry heard from Professor Angela Gallop, a renowned forensic scientist. Our report, Rebuilding forensic science for criminal justice: an urgent need, found little to contradict this. The criminal justice system relies on good, solid forensic science to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. But we have grave concerns about the forensic science system in England and Wales on the basis of our inquiry.

Prior to 2012, forensic science was provided by the Forensic Science Service, which was at arms length from the Home Office. It was shut down and replaced by a mix of a private forensic science market and in-house provision by the police. Witnesses to our inquiry, including Government ministers responsible for overseeing the system, were almost unanimous in saying that this system needs urgent reform. Let me outline why.

When the Forensic Science Service was closed, the responsibility for storing new evidence fell to the 43 police forces, who were apparently not resourced to undertake it properly. Some rose to the challenge. But national guidance was not consistently followed, and many criminal cases are collapsing, often due to lost and damaged evidence. Overstretched police forces are struggling to keep up. This is true in digital forensics as well. It’s increasingly important for fighting crime, but a backlog of over 20,000 digital devices to be analysed has not shrunk in years.

Police provision is patchy, inconsistent, and lacking in oversight. There are 43 police forces in England and Wales, so the quality of in-house forensic provision varies in a ‘postcode lottery’ – some is excellent and some is quite badly underresourced. Our committee believes that forensic science should be at arm’s length from the police to avoid unconscious bias.

There is no equality of arms between prosecution and defence. Defence experts are needed to challenge the claims made by the prosecution, but rely on limited legal aid funding which is often painful to obtain. The defence expert community is being allowed to wither away, which risks leaving claims from the prosecution unchallenged.

The market meant to provide many forensic services has collapsed. Market competition was supposed to provide better forensics at a lower cost. But the market is dysfunctional, with one buyer   – the police – resulting in very thin profit margins; and there are very high barriers to entry for new companies to set up, get accredited, and compete. The result is that now one company provides more than 80% of forensic science to the police. This puts the market in a very perilous position.

The market is also not supporting specialist forensic disciplines like fibres, marks and traces because they don’t make money – but we’ve heard from witnesses about high profile cases that would never have been solved without these specialist disciplines. Without more funding, we will lose these areas of expertise forever, and some cases may become impossible to solve.

Nor are these problems new – this inquiry is a follow-up to one I participated in back in 2019. Many of the problems we identified then have got worse in the intervening years.

Ministers accept that this system has to change. They have launched proposals for large-scale police reforms that will consolidate the number of forces and deliver forensics on a national basis. This is a good first step to finally address some of these problems and hopefully provide consistent and reliable forensic science across the country.

I was struck throughout our inquiry that there was widespread agreement on the issues. No one wants to risk miscarriages of justice when forensic science is used incorrectly. No one wants the guilty to walk free or the innocent to be convicted because of a lack of quality, independent forensic analysis. The forensic science community is full of hard-working, dedicated professionals: in the police, in forensic science providers, in the law, in academia, who do what they do out of a desire to see that justice is done. They are constrained by a failing system.

 These deeper-rooted issues of structural underfunding, market failure, inequality of arms between prosecution and defence, and independence—capacity, resilience, quality, and fairness—must be addressed. We have urged the government to take action now, and not to wait for the end of this lengthy and uncertain policing reform process. Otherwise, there is a very real risk of more miscarriages of justice, which could take years or decades to be put right. These reforms, and the sense of crisis around the sector, provide a real opportunity to address these long standing problems. Will the Government finally seize it?

Lord Mair CBE, Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology