Digital Forensic Services

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble and learned Lord raises a very important issue. Where a laboratory is suspected of having fallen short of standards, procedures will be under way to ensure that retesting takes place. I understand that that is happening as we speak. I will draw to the attention of the Attorney-General the suggestion the noble and learned Lord just made.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, it is probably not something that many in the House know, but the vast majority of cases coming before the criminal courts involve looking at social media for the assistance it gives in prosecutions and, indeed, in defence. It is often a signifier of the nature of relationships and often shows the extent of contact. Sometimes it shows that there is contact with certain people immediately before the commission of a crime. The quality of that assessment is very serious. It is clearly the position that there are just not enough people with the technical know-how being recruited to resource and to do this work to assist the prosecuting and defence authorities. We are talking about a serious piece of work being done in our universities and so on to create forensic skills for this purpose. As we now know, technology is widely used. Will the Minister tell us what efforts are being made to find recruits for this purpose?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The review I referred to, asked for by the Attorney-General, will identify solutions to some of the problems that the noble Baroness just referred to. It is the case that in recent years there has been an explosion in the use of social media in court cases. This has put enormous pressure on the digital forensic services. The regulator is aware of these issues. I hope that the review I have outlined, which is looking at these very issues, will come up with proposals and solutions that the Government can then take forward. I entirely agree that no one should be convicted because inadequate research has been done into relevant email and social media sources.