Biometrics Commissioner and Forensic Science Regulator

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. It is also a pleasure to serve on the Science and Technology Committee under the chairship of the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). I associate myself with his questions and the general points that he made, with one exception. The history of the Science and Technology Committee looking at forensic science goes back even further than he set out. I have been on the Committee a long time, but the first report on the subject came out before I joined it. Called “Forensic science on trial”, the report was published on 29 March 2005. The right hon. Gentleman referred to issues that have been examined repeatedly by the Committee—these are not my speaking notes, Dr Huq—but not to all the reports and the responses of the Government that have been produced on this issue.

The “Forensic Science on Trial” report went through the even longer history of forensic science. The way in which the Home Office has responded over time to the changing science is interesting and relevant. Science and the ability to examine and get information from crime scenes have changed enormously over time. It was only in 1988 that DNA led to the conviction of the double murderer Colin Pitchfork. Since then, DNA has been used thousands of times for many different crime scenes.

What worried the Committee then was that there had been big changes. Back in the early 90s, police forces went along to the people who did forensic science and asked for analysis of things from a crime scene, and they got it with no cost. The then Home Secretary, the noble Lord Blunkett, thought that there should be a more commercial relationship between the Forensic Science Service and police forces, and that the Forensic Science Service should be moved into a public-private partnership body. The Science and Technology Committee looked at that proposal and said that things would be lost if the service was changed in that way. A lot of evidence was taken, and the Committee’s report, which I will summarise, having just read it again, said that the evidence was not there to justify doing that.

Nevertheless, after the 2010 general election, the new coalition Government looked at the funding of the Forensic Science Service. They said that it was losing £2 million a month and things would have to change. They said that there was a real possibility, given that the Forensic Science Service was world leading, that we could sell our services internationally and make money from them. The Committee looked at that and said that the case was not made, because the statistics claiming that the cost was £2 million a month were based on false information. The laboratory at Chorley had already been closed, and the people working in the Forensic Science Service on the other side of Lambeth bridge were very worried about their future. The Committee certainly was not convinced that the changes should be made.

I will say this now so that there is no mistake: the Labour Government made some of the original decisions to change the Forensic Science Service, the coalition Government made a number of changes and the Conservative Government have made further changes. I do not see this as a party political matter at all. Like the Minister and other hon. Members around this Chamber, I want the forensic science facilities, whether private or public sector—it is not about differences between private and public—to yield the best information that will lead to the conviction of criminals. That is the key issue. It is not an ideological issue. Having said that, there has been a failure of Government, right the way through the process, to properly consider how to keep our elite status in world forensic science—it looks as though we have lost it now—and how best to deliver forensic science for the criminal justice system.

One of the conclusions of the Committee’s forensic science report, which was published during the 2010 to 2012 Session, was that if and when the Forensic Science Service disappeared, which it did, one of the things that would be lost was the context of the crime. The private sector does a very good job when it comes to simple, repetitive operations, such as doing fingerprint or DNA analysis. What is missing from the service at present, however, is the ability for the police to go to a public sector body, or a private sector body for that matter, and ask, “What question should we be asking? We are not scientists.” Previously when I visited the Forensic Science Service, it was very strong on the point that it would be able to help the client—the police, the criminal justice system—ask the right questions, which it could then examine scientifically before giving the information back. That has not happened, and that is one of the losses to the service.

The other loss to the service, to which the Government have never really responded, is that when the Forensic Science Service went, the money going into forensic science research and forensic science was lost and has never been replaced. The different science funding bodies do not really recognise forensic science as part of their bailiwick or funding responsibilities. Not only are the right questions not necessarily being asked, but the money going into research and science has been lost, and I believe it should be replaced.

During one of the many inquiries we have had, we heard from Dr Tully, who worked for the Forensic Science Service, then became a regulator and has now gone into academic life. When she came before the Committee, I asked her three or four times whether murderers and rapists would get off because of the changes in the Forensic Science Service, and every time she answered positively—that that would be the case. The right questions would not be asked, so the right information would not be fed into the courts system and very bad people would not be brought to justice. Murder and rape are the worst crimes, but the problem goes right the way through the system. If we do not have a good forensic science service, we do not have a good criminal justice system, because the criminal justice system relies on the scientific interrogation of crime science.

When the original decision was taken to disband the Forensic Science Service and leave things up to the market, there was an internal Home Office problem that I think indicates a broader problem. Professor Silverman, who was then the scientific adviser to the Home Office, told the Committee he was not consulted, and nor was the then Forensic Science Regulator. That indicates that the decision was viewed entirely as a cost-saving issue and not as a way of ensuring that the criminal justice system worked as well as it could to bring criminals to justice.

The other side—which the Committee has written about in every report since, including the latest one—is that now that the Forensic Science Service has effectively been disbanded, we all rely on the market to work. At different times, as the Minister will know, because he has replied to this point, the market in forensic science has been close to collapse for a number of reasons—most recently, because of covid, not as much work was being commissioned. One of the good sides of covid was that there was less crime, so there was less need for forensic science.

Another driver, over a longer period, was that the police were taking a lot of forensic sciences in-house to save money. However, they were not only saving money but using non-ISO-accredited systems to do that. They lost the good Forensic Science Service and replaced it with something with no accreditation, which makes it more challengeable in court. That was another reason why the Committee did not support the disbandment of the Forensic Science Service—because the market was too volatile and not stable enough to ensure that the forensic science that the police and the courts needed would be there to be used.

I do not know why Governments of different political colours have not got this correct and have dragged their feet on the regular call for the Forensic Science Regulator to be put on a statutory footing. It is half on a statutory footing now because my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), with Government support, took a private Member’s Bill through. However, even that Bill does not deal with biometrics in terms of the statutory basis for the regulator, so that demand has only partially been met.

I do not know whether the Minister, who has been in office for a period, knows why the Home Office, under different political parties, has not given the service the political prioritisation that the public would want, because I think the case is overwhelming. The public have an enormous appetite for television shows about forensic science and for reading detective novels, in which cutting up cadavers is the main focus. Yet, at the same time, our forensic service has gone from being one of the best in the world to, quite frankly, being moth-eaten and not as good as it should be.

I have spoken for quite a long time, but I want to emphasise a point that the Chair of the Committee made about custody pictures. If you, Dr Huq, were arrested—I am sure you would not be found guilty of anything—and taken into a police station, your DNA, fingerprints and photograph would be taken. If you were arrested by mistake, your DNA and your fingerprints would be destroyed if you wanted them to be, and you would have no criminal record, but your facial record would remain in the computers. With all the connections those computers have, that is very worrying. Most people do not know that they can ask for those photographs to be deleted. The Chair of the Committee referred to the Government’s commitment that they would be automatically deleted after six years. That is too slow. I do not think police forces have any right to keep a picture of you or anybody else who is not guilty on record, where it can be misused and accessed improperly in many cases. The Government have not, over that period, given the resources to police forces to delete those pictures. However, I have spoken long enough and I will let other people speak.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

The first of our Front Benchers, who is also a Committee member, is Carol Monaghan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I will come on to that in a moment. I just want to address the question of a legal framework. There is already a comprehensive legal framework around the operation of this technology. As Members will know, it has been tested through the courts. The police have broad common-law powers around the detection and investigation of crimes, including the use of technology, but there are other bits of interlocking legislation that need to be borne in mind.

Obviously, there is PACE—the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010 and, indeed, data protection legislation, all of which gives a framework in which the police must operate. They are also subject to regulation through the Information Commissioner’s Office on the retention and use of data, and through a range of oversight bodies—happily, some external and some internal. As Members will know, a number of forces have, for example, ethics panels that are looking at the use of this technology. I will point Members who are interested to my appearance last week in front of the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which is looking at exactly this issue—the ethics and regulatory regime around the use of biometrics in particular.

We helped the police to appoint a chief scientific adviser, and forces have access to further support from their own ethics committees, as I said, as well as the Police Digital Service, the College of Policing and others. We have been working with the police to clarify the circumstances in which they can use live facial recognition and the categories of people they can look for, and I am told that the College of Policing will be publishing national guidance soon. That is a word that I have come to love in this job—“soon”, “soonest”, “shortly”.

It is of course an important part of our democratic process that people can raise and debate, including here in Parliament, legitimate concerns about police use of new technologies, and that legal challenges can be made in the courts, as has been referred to. Bridges v. South Wales police is an example.

I know that Members will recognise the importance of the police holding a bank of custody images for the potential identification of suspects and, often, witnesses. However, it is important that the public understand their rights in relation to the biometric data of all kinds that is held on them, and in particular their images. Last year, the National Police Chiefs’ Council established a new working group to develop further guidance on the retention of custody images. Through that group, the Home Office has worked with the police to issue new guidance stressing that people have the right to request deletion of their custody images. The police will communicate that guidance through various means to complement the existing information that is already available online and elsewhere. However, it remains the Government’s ambition to deliver an automatic deletion system for these images. We hope to do that during this Parliament, and I would be happy to supply the Science and Technology Committee with more details when I have them in due course.

[Graham Stringer]

I do not disagree with anything the Minister is saying, but would it not be easier if, when people are taken into the custody suite after an arrest and have their photograph taken, there were a simple sign next to the camera saying, “If you are found not guilty, or you are not guilty or the charge is not sustained, you have the right to have these images deleted”?

[Kit Malthouse]

I certainly think it would be a good idea to provide people with that information at as early an opportunity as we can. Whether they would read a notice on the wall at that moment of particular stress is something that I would have to think about, but it should be possible to provide them with that information as they exit the police station, having been released with no further action. That does not necessarily suppose that they are not going to be subject to further investigation at that point, but they can at least be informed of their right to request the deletion. Whether the police force complies will depend on other factors.

I told the Committee last June that we would make an announcement about further reforms to empower the police to use technologies while maintaining public trust. As I outlined earlier, we believe that a comprehensive legal framework and a range of regulatory and oversight bodies are in place, but we are always seeking improvements. We have already appointed one person to carry out the previously part-time roles of the Biometrics Commissioner and the Surveillance Camera Commissioner to reflect the increasing convergence of those technologies.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport consulted last year on further consolidating biometrics oversight arrangements, recognising that the current arrangements are complex and confusing for the police and public alike, and that they potentially inhibit confident adoption of new technologies. We have also consulted on a power to create a code of practice to set out the principles for police adoption of new technologies, such as biometrics, to ensure greater consistency while maintaining the flexibility to allow the law to keep up with rapidly developing technology. We will respond to that and to the DCMS consultation in the spring.

As I hope I have outlined, the Government recognise right hon. and hon. Members’ aspiration that this should be a critical stream of work for the Home Office, and for policing more generally. We also recognise that there is the possibility to undermine public trust in the use of technology if we do not get the framework of accountability, supervision and regulation correct. For these technologies to be successful, they need to be successful in court, which requires standardisation and quality. We recognise that there are capacity issues that need to be addressed, and we are working with partners to fill those gaps. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells will take comfort, for example, from the fact that the Forensic Capability Network, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the private sector are, as we speak, working together on a workforce strategy to plug exactly the capability and capacity holes that he identified.

Finally, as I said at the start of my remarks, we believe that the use of forensics, biometrics and technology together, as they converge, presents an enormous prospect for a great leap forwards in our collective safety in this country—not just in the prosecution of crime, but in its prevention. The critical thing to remember about fighting crime is that the greatest deterrent to any crime being committed is the perception by the person who would commit it of their likelihood of being caught. The better we get at catching those people and putting them behind bars, the less likely they are to offend.