Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Written Statement of 21 November 2017, HCWS265, on toxicology, what assessment her Department had made of the effectiveness of forensic services carried out by Randox Testing Services before the cases referred to in HCWS265 were identified; and what data her Department held on services carried out by Randox Testing Services.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council have said that cases across 42 police force areas may have been affected by manipulation.

Randox Testing Service’s (RTS’s) suitability to secure a place on the National Forensic Framework Next Generation (NFFNG) - which was awarded in July 2012 and ran until July 2016 - was evaluated as part of the published evaluation criteria of the competitive procurement process. This included assessment of a written bid and site verification visit against pre-determined criteria. Assessment was made in the following areas: accreditation, business continuity, price, quality, security and service provision.

During the term of the NFFNG, the Home Office supported policing with ongoing monitoring of forensics service providers including RTS on quality, accreditation, financial stability, security (including staff vetting), business continuity mechanisms, subcontracting arrangements and capacity. The Home Office supported those police forces running mini-competitions under NFFNG by assisting with their assessment of accreditation, business continuity and security.

The Home Office held data on services delivered under contracts tendered under the National Forensic Frameworks. This was principally in the form of data submitted to the Forensic Management Information Tool by forensic service providers including RTS. These data included details of the submissions received from police forces, critical dates, offence types, timeliness, cost, and specific type provided against a specified list of forensic products.

The pipeline monitoring system was a non-contractual framework management process adopted under the NFFNG. The purpose of the pipeline was to provide visibility to the user community and the marketplace of planned tendering under the NFFNG. The Pipeline was distributed intermittently to the user community and forensic service providers, including RTS, that were parties to the NFFNG.