howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
#1
from this mornings "guardian"
Government plans to close the Forensic Science Service, drawn up in a hasty bid to cut public spending, threaten to disrupt the criminal justice system and leave scores of cold cases unsolved, MPs warned in a report published on Friday.
The closure of the loss-making FSS will require private companies to shoulder an extra 120,000 cases a year, but ministers have failed to check whether UK laboratories can cope with the extra demand, the MPs said.
The decision to wind down the FSS also casts doubts over ongoing casework, which will have to be transferred to other labs, and the future of crime scene specimens archived at the FSS, which are crucial for re-opening cold cases.
The Home Office announced last year that it would close the beleaguered FSS, which employs 1,600 people, by March 2012 on the grounds that it was losing £2m a month. Some areas of the business are expected to be sold off to private companies, while others will be absorbed into the Home Office.
But a report published on Friday by the influential Commons Science and Technology Committee claims the deadline for the closure is too tight, and urges ministers to delay for at least six months to give the government time to take more advice and put forward a more comprehensive strategy for forensic science.
The scathing report accuses the government of failing to appreciate the impact of the closure on forensic research and development, the ability of private labs to absorb the FSS's current 60% market share of cases, and the wider implications for the criminal justice system. The report blames the policies of previous governments for the failure of the FSS to thrive after it was privatised in the early 1990s.
"We were shocked when conducting this inquiry at how little consideration the government had given to the wider impacts of the FSS closure before making its decision. The elephant in the room was police in-sourcing to largely unaccredited labs which had been eroding the market away from the FSS and private providers," said Andrew Miller, chair of the committee.
"We now call on the government to stabilise the market, curbing police in-sourcing, and come up with a sensible strategy for forensic science research and provision in England and Wales," he added.
"There is a risk to cold case reviews, a risk to ongoing cases, where it will be uncertain where forensic work will be concluded, and a risk to justice in general if there is no stability in the market because of police in-sourcing to largely unaccredited labs," Miller told the Guardian.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic services at the Metropolitan Police Service, told the committee's inquiry that the closure of the FSS would be "an operational challenge of unprecedented magnitude". He estimated that the force would have to find labs to do forensic work for 300 suspicious death investigations, 1,500 rape and sexually motivated crimes and 1,500 crimes of serious violence.
In a rare move, the MPs critised the Home Office for sidelining its own chief scientific adviser, Bernard Silverman, but said more worrying was Silverman's acceptance of his exclusion, which raised "questions about his effectiveness within the Home Office", Miller said.
The committee was so concerned about the lack of scientific consultation behind the decision that it has urged the Government Office for Science to investigate whether there was a "systemic problem with the Home Office's use of scientific evidence in policy making". The Home Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Sir Alec Jeffreys, the pioneer of DNA fingerprinting at Leicester University, told MPs on the committee that closing the FSS would "potentially disastrous" for UK forensic research and development. While the FSS has a track record for developing new forensic techniques, commercial laboratories focus almost exclusively on tried-and-trusted tests, he said.
The report adds: "Proper consideration should now be given to what resources might be irretrievably lost to the UK with the closure of the FSS, including the FSS's archives and the intellectual wealth residing within its scientists. We have seen no detailed plan outlining the transition and the future of the FSS's staff, archives, work and assets."
#2
This really is another of those make-the-decision-without-the-full-facts jobbies. I sense jerking knees again........