Digital Forensic Services

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, more than 20 police forces have had to bail out key forensic science services because of the decision of the Government in 2012 to close the highly regarded national Forensic Science Service. Will those police forces be compensated, and precisely what benefits have accrued from the decision to break up the national Forensic Science Service?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The Forensic Science Service was closed in 2012. It was losing £2 million a month. Although this was not the reason for closure, there were real issues about the quality of some of its work, with multiple requests for case reviews and retesting. Increasingly, police forces that did not have their own in-house capacity were going to alternative service providers other than the FSS. It is not the case that the closure of the FSS has led to some of the issues that we have been discussing today.