MPs blast closure of forensic services

In winding up the Forensic Science Service (FSS), which it claimed was losing £2m a month, the Government “hastily overlooked” the consequences for research and development and the wider criminal justice system “in favour of the bottom line”, a parliamentary committee concluded.

Its members have called on the Government to extend by at least six months its “extremely challenging deadline” to close the service by March next year.

They also raised concerns about a growing tendency for police forces to shun the Government-owned FSS and private companies in favour of carrying out forensic work at in-house laboratories, some of which fail to meet the same standards.

Transferring work from the FSS to such laboratories was “highly undesirable” and would prompt “serious concerns”, MPs found, posing “significant and unacceptable risks to criminal justice”.

The damning findings are presented in a report by the Commons Science and Technology Committee, which decided to study the Home Office’s move after it was greeted with dismay by MPs, FSS employees and eminent forensic scientists worldwide.

Employing 1,650 staff including 200 at a laboratory in Wetherby, the FSS has uncovered crucial evidence in investigations into the 7/7 bombings and the abduction of Dewsbury schoolgirl Shannon Matthews.

Committee chairman Andrew Miller said MPs had been “shocked” at how little consideration the Government had given the wider impact of the service’s closure.

“The elephant in the room was police in-sourcing to largely unaccredited labs which had been eroding the market away from the FSS and private providers,” he said. “We now call on the Government to stabilise the market, curbing police in-sourcing, and come up with a sensible strategy for forensic science research and provision in England and Wales.”

MPs heard that the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Home Office, Professor Bernard Silverman, had been excluded from the decision-making process.

They said it was “unacceptable” that Prof Silverman was satisfied with this and that he later failed to challenge the Government’s decision on the service’s future.

Mr Miller said: “In deciding to close an organisation with science in its title, the Home Office sidelined its own Chief Scientific Adviser. That says volumes about its attitude to science.

“But more worryingly, the Chief Scientific Adviser’s acceptance of his exclusion raises questions about his effectiveness within the Home Office.”

The committee disputed the Home Office’s claim the FSS was losing £2m a month, but agreed that it was in a “dire financial position” and facing problems.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We don’t agree with the committee’s report. It mis-states a number of very significant points.

“Our focus remains on providing continued high quality forensic services to the justice system now and in the future. We remain confident that our plans for winding down the FSS will deliver this.”