Forensic Science Regulator Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I was a member of the Science and Technology Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, chaired so well. That called for a statutory basis for the Forensic Science Regulator, along with many other previous reports, so I too support this long-overdue Bill and the sanctioning powers that it gives the statutory regulator. I thank my noble friend Lord Kennedy for sponsoring it. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, the Bill is not enough. I will touch on two issues.

Our report outlined dangerous flaws in the forensic science market: the instability of larger providers, the patchiness in availability of specialists and niche providers, and the lack of a strategic overview of future skills and staff requirements. Although a specialist team was set up within the Forensic Capability Network to manage and develop the market, it tended to focus on procurement co-ordination rather than broader market issues, so there is still a major challenge for the forensic science market.

In their response to our Science and Technology Committee report, the Government undertook to

“study other models of regulation”

but we have not yet seen the results of any such studies. The Government recognised that there is a

“strong relationship between price and quality”

and market stability and that there is

“an argument to be made for specific market regulation”.

There are plenty of other examples of regulators which consider both quality and market stability: the Care Quality Commission, which I chaired, in the care sector; Ofwat in the water sector; and Ofgem in the energy sector, to name but a few. I hope that the Government can be persuaded to give this combined role to the new statutory Forensic Science Regulator once that position is established.

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, highlighted an issue in another area where the Forensic Science Service is still struggling considerably: digital forensics. Police forensics budgets continue to be under pressure, yet the demand for digital evidence and the complexity of its requirements continue to grow. There is an urgent need for enhanced artificial intelligence and other technological solutions to the analysis of digital evidence in order to prevent the current poor standard of analysis and long delays damaging the criminal justice process and harming people’s lives. Although the Transforming Forensics programme has had some impact in this area, much more needs to be done, and the forensic science policy steering group needs to ensure that co-ordinated and funded programmes of R&D are at a scale to tackle and solve this urgent problem of digital forensic analysis. I hope that the new regulator will highlight what needs to be done on this issue in her very first report.