Rebuilding Forensic Science for Criminal Justice (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Grand Committee

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I was proud to be a member of this Select Committee, which I was until earlier this year, and I commend my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, for his chairship, the report and the way in which he introduced it. It was so comprehensively introduced that I find it difficult to know what more I can add, apart from the fact that I pretty well agree with every single word of it. The noble Lord said that forensic science is not working for anyone. Frankly, that is an understatement. It is a mess and the Government need to take decisive action because forensic science is crucial to our criminal justice system. As a committee, we were very disappointed by the Government’s refusal to support our recommendation for a national institute for forensic science. I, for one, hope that this might still be reconsidered, because it makes sense.

This House has many roles to perform. It holds the Government to account, it conducts pre-legislative scrutiny—not enough, and we should have more—and, of course, it engages in post-legislative scrutiny and following things up. This is a classic example of something that needed to be done. We decided to conduct the inquiry precisely because we thought that the subject needed to be looked at again, and we were right. Do not forget that an underlying purpose of this is to avoid future miscarriages of justice, and the Committee should not forget what can be at stake. There have been some celebrated examples over the years. I looked back and dug up a few; I will mention one or two that Members may recall.

Do noble Lords remember Stefan Kiszko? He spent 16 years in prison before scientific proof showed that he could not have been guilty, and DNA testing later identified the actual killer. Sally Clark was wrongfully convicted of murdering her two infant sons and the prosecution relied heavily on flawed medical testimony and misleading statistical claims. She was cleared after fresh evidence revealed that one of the babies died of a staphylococcal infection. Peter Sullivan spent 38 years in prison for murder. At the time of his trial, advanced DNA profiling was unavailable or inconclusive, and his conviction was finally quashed only last year after modern testing isolated a male profile that completely excluded him. Going back even further, the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four cases, arising out of what we now call the Northern Ireland Troubles in the 1970s and 1980s, relied heavily in some cases on manipulated forensic tests. The establishment of the Forensic Science Advisory Council was recommended in 1993 as a result.

One of our findings is—I want to emphasise this—that we need some structural clarity. The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice need to decide who takes responsibility for forensic science, as the noble Lord said in introducing the report. It seemed to us that the Ministry of Justice should take the lead when it comes to ensuring what we call an “equality of arms”. Can my noble friend the Minister, who has had great experience of government and represents the Home Office ably in this House, give us clarity as to who is responsible for this important area? Will he make a commitment on behalf of the Government to an equality of arms? The prosecution and defence need equal access to the forensic science evidence, which can, after all, convict as well as exonerate. Justice demands that forensic science makes both possible.

We all know that since our report the Government have announced their plans for a radical restructuring of police forces. I, too, ask my noble friend what progress is being made in rationalising the existing 43 police forces in England and Wales into a smaller number. What number might that be? When will we know? When will the Bill be introduced?

I should at this point express my great gratitude to the staff of the committee, some of whom are here today. Thomas Hornigold has been mentioned, and I endorse that, as well as thanking all the other staff. They have done an excellent job and continue to do so. I also thank the Library for its briefing, which has also been very helpful.

This is not the first time that I have crossed paths with forensic science in my professional life—talk about déjà vu. I remember a House of Commons Select Committee considering this matter in its report in 2011 and, going back even further, I remember consideration of forensic science in this House in the early 1990s. In a different capacity I helped the Royal Society of Chemistry provide evidence that was considered at that time by a Select Committee chaired by Lord Dainton, a formidable figure who produced a landmark report on forensic science, which examined the state funding, organisation and delivery of forensic science services in the UK. It was Lord Dainton himself who highlighted the operational delays plaguing investigations by stating:

“Evidence delayed is evidence denied”.


I think that noble Lords would agree that that is still true today.

The key concerns at that time included investigating sample backlogs, turnaround times and the structural and commercial changes affecting police access to forensic science laboratories. Following the Dainton report, the forensic science landscape underwent radical transformation and transitioned from a highly centralised government service into a fully commercialised open market, which, as the noble Lord indicated, is falling apart. If one of the companies pulled out, we would be in a terrible mess. I will not go through all of this in detail, as this is a debate not a history lesson and my time is rapidly running out.

However, we should not forget that in the years of the Forensic Science Service we created the first national DNA database. We were a global leader in pioneering techniques such as Alec Jeffreys’ genetic fingerprinting and advanced DNA amplification, yet in 2012 the Government completely shut the service down. That closure, which privatised the majority of internal work, has been responsible for so much of the damage that we are facing today. In retrospect, we can see that the closure lies at the heart of many of the problems that we still face. I have a list of some examples that I will not go into, except to say that research that does not yield a direct short-term commercial profit is nevertheless still vital and things such as fibres and hairs collected on clothing is being abandoned to our great cost in future. The closure of the Forensic Science Service was a terrible mistake.

As my time is up, I shall just say that we reported on this in 2019. We reported on this again this year, and I hope that when my noble friend replies he can give the Committee some reassurance that the Government will take decisive action, otherwise we will be here again discussing this in a much worse situation than we are in now.