Forensic Science Service

Written evidence submitted by Axiom International Limited (FSS 81)

Executive Summary

The Forensic Science Service (FSS) has been providing scientific services to the Criminal Justice System for the past 80 years. The emergence of a market in forensic science came about in an attempt to balance supply and demand, and it has been remarkably successful.

All of the work currently carried out by the FSS could be undertaken by the private sector.

The safest way to achieve transition would be for at least parts of the FSS to be sold off as they are, but this may not be practicable.

The most obvious alternative – transferring the FSS’s work to other providers, will only work if the transition is managed to avoid loss of too many experienced staff, and if at least some of these staff go to an organisation which understands and can support the requirements of major crime investigation.

In any event, to safeguard quality and supply of forensic services and avoid miscarriages of justice based on incomplete or faulty science there is an immediate need to:

- Make adjustments to the procurement system to reflect the complexities of some forensic activities and the needs of the courts

- Rationalising the current trend for in-sourcing forensics by police

As soon as the market has stabilised, urgent attention should be given to developing a new model for delivering forensic services involving both police and provider resources to guarantee quality and maximise responsiveness and cost effectiveness.

Funds for R&D need to be assured - either through increased profits or direct grants from the Home Office or a combination of the two. R&D should involve partnerships between academia and operational laboratories.

Introduction

1. Axiom International Limited is a private company specialising in assisting overseas governments to improve their law enforcement infrastructure by providing forensic science and police training and a range of related activities (see Annex for more details).

2. Axiom’s Executive Chairman is Lord John Stevens – former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; its Chief Executive is Professor Angela Gallop who, in 1997, co-founded Forensic Alliance (now LGC Forensics) – the only independent forensic company to provide comprehensive forensic science services and therefore competition across the board to the FSS, and its Managing Director is Chris Gregg QPM – described by his Chief Constable as the finest senior detective his force (West Yorkshire) had ever known. To this extent, the Company is ideally positioned to provide informed independent advice on this issue.

3. On the basis that, as Sir Winston Churchill put it "the farther backwards you can look, the farther forwards you are likely to see", this submission begins by briefly rehearsing the history of forensic science provision in England and Wales before commenting on each of the questions the Science and Technology Committee has posed.

History of Forensic Science and the Forensic Science Market

4. Modern forensic science in the UK can be traced back to the early twentieth century when science was sufficiently well established to be able to make significant contributions to crime investigation.

5. Increasingly tests were performed in small local authority laboratories, and by the 1930s some of these laboratories were transferred under Home Office control forming the beginnings of the Home Office Forensic Science Service (HOFSS, later the FSS). At roughly the same time, the Metropolitan Police established its own laboratory (ultimately to be subsumed by the FSS).

6. By the 1960s there were nine specialist forensic laboratories in England and Wales. With advances in technology came increasing reliance on forensic science and, despite investment in large new laboratories, by the 1980s demand was seriously outstripping supply. The Home Office decided the best way to restore balance was to change arrangements for funding. In 1991, it devolved the budget to individual police forces, arguing that if police had to pay directly for forensic services, they might use less of them. Since they could now choose where they sent items for analysis, this led to the emergence of a forensic market.

7. At first, competition to the FSS was limited to organisations already engaged in similar work. A prime example was LGC (Laboratory of The Government Chemist – privatised in 1996) which had been providing increasingly large scale drugs and toxicology testing to HM Customs and Excise since 1842. Then new forensic providers started to emerge, some encouraged by a Government initiative to increase the size of the National DNA Database to make it more useful.

8. Competition inspired much needed improvements in analytical turnround times and costs of analysis. It provided novel approaches which led directly to the solving of several of our most complex and intractable crimes, and it started to make important contributions to innovation.

9. Police forensic budgets grew which prompted greater focus on value for money. This highlighted the difficulty of comparing one forensic supplier with another because they all described their services and calculated prices in different ways.

10. To overcome this and provide a greater degree of control, the police introduced a new procurement system for forensic science. This specified - through a series of ‘products’, the precise nature and level of service required, timescales for delivery, and quality and reporting standards to be met, with price the only real differentiator. Prices fell substantially which suited the police. But scientists were dismayed because they were left with little or no opportunity to use their skill and ingenuity to develop more effective investigative strategies than allowed by simple lists of ‘products’ chosen by their customers. There was also less money to be channelled into research and development – the life blood of any scientific enterprise.

11. Compounding the difficulties was an all or nothing approach to contracts, resulting in huge swings of work between unsuccessful and successful providers which started to have a seriously destabilising effect on the market. The first to bear the brunt of these swings was the FSS because they had the largest share of the market, reflecting their historic monopoly.

12. In an effort to cut costs further some larger forces started to do more forensic work themselves within expanded forensic facilities of their own. Concerns began to emerge about quality standards in these facilities, about the wisdom of splitting analytical effort between two different organisations in the same case, and about the damage in-sourcing might be doing to the general health of the forensic market. But with renewed pressure on police budgets in the aftermath of the banking crisis, in-sourcing is increasing and external forensic laboratories are seeing work volumes and revenues plummet. The still embryonic market is currently in a state of turmoil – reflected and compounded by the recent decision to close the FSS.

Specific Topics on which Comment is Requested

1. What will be the impact of the closure of the Forensic Science Service on forensic science and on the future development of forensic science in the UK?

1.1 The FSS is the single largest provider of forensic services in the UK, and it is one of only two providers to cover a sufficiently wide range of forensic science disciplines to enable the most complex crimes to be tackled effectively.

1.2 Removing the largest supplier, and particularly if this occurs over too short a timescale, will put great pressure on the other much smaller providers and it is far from clear that they will be able to cope. Combined with the increasing unattractiveness of the forensic market owing to its rapidly reducing size - through budget cuts and in-sourcing by police, and the difficulty of balancing the books following the introduction of an inappropriate system of procurement, providers may be far less ready than they were in the past to invest in new facilities and increased staffing levels.

1.3 Removing one of only two full service suppliers means that, unless some of the most experienced FSS scientists are relocated to another organisation, there will be only one firm left with sufficient scientific breadth and understanding to tackle the most complex cases. If the FSS cannot afford to maintain the necessary range of science then maybe no-one else can, and we shall become nothing more than the routine testing houses the procurement system envisages – a self-fulfilling prophesy.

1.4 Historically, the FSS has made important contributions to research and development – both nationally and internationally, and they have received additional funds in a variety of different ways to support this. Independent providers have also made significant contributions, relying on a percentage of profits for funding. But with margins now being squeezed so tightly, it is increasingly difficult to deliver day to day services, let alone fund anything much in the way of research. Either the market has to become sufficiently profitable to support forensic innovation, or the Government will need to continue to fund it. Such innovation should be delivered through imaginative partnerships between academia and operational laboratories to raise standards while keeping the focus relevant.

2. What will be the implications of the closure on the quality and impartiality of forensic evidence used in the criminal justice system?

2.1 Closure of the FSS will inevitably increase the pace of in-sourcing by the police. This started some years ago in an attempt to reduce the forensic budget and is already having a significant impact on the size of the market and the quality of evidence provided to the criminal justice system.

2.2 Increasingly police staff conduct initial examinations of items within expanded facilities of their own, even to the extent of recovering tiny traces of material which they present pre-loaded in test tubes for forensic laboratories simply to conduct a specified type of analysis.

2.3 This brings the danger of unwitting bias as, from within the police investigative machine, they make increasingly fine selections about which items they can afford to examine. There is no requirement for police facilities to match the quality standards demanded of external forensic providers, giving rise to concerns about potential loss of evidence from items or, worse still, addition of ‘evidence’ through unwitting cross-contamination. Fragmenting examinations between scientists and police personnel mean that neither of them can provide full interpretations of the findings because they each only have part of the picture, and there are real fears that reducing the role and responsibilities of forensic scientists will drive the best of them out of the business if they are not already lost during the current upheaval.

2.4 it is deeply disappointing that we are opening ourselves up to potential miscarriages of justice when this should have been a lesson well learned two decades ago.

3. What is the financial position of the Forensic Science Service?

3.1 Others are better qualified to answer this question than we.

4. What is the state of, and prospects for, the forensics market in the UK, specifically whether the private sector can carry out the work currently done by the Forensic Science Service and the volume and nature of the forensic work carried out by police forces?

4.1 The state of the forensics market in the UK is currently very fragile. This is partly because of a procurement system which treats all forensic science as a commodity – to be bought and sold as a series of simple tests or activities with no acknowledgement of necessary subtleties at the more complex end of the scale. It is also partly because increasing in-sourcing by police is reducing the size of the market and making it increasingly less attractive to invest in. This fragility of the market will worsen unless and until these two fundamental issues have been addressed.

4.2 The private sector is perfectly capable of carrying out all of the work currently undertaken by the FSS provided it has time to adjust and not too many highly skilled and talented scientists are lost in the process. Indeed, it was the private sector that led the way in substantially reducing turnaround times for routine analyses and making them much more cost effective. It was also the private sector which helped to solve many of the UK’s most complex and intractable cases including, for example, Lynette White, Damilola Taylor and Rachel Nickell, with exoneration of long term suspects - The Cardiff Three and Colin Stagg. This was not, as commonly supposed, simply due to use of new technologies, but also to innovative approaches to finding evidence, and the constructing of novel strategies for testing it. And it is the private sector that has been developing the most versatile of the new generation of rapid DNA techniques.

4.3 So, if given sufficient time for an orderly transfer, and ensuring relocation of a good many of the most experienced and talented scientists to organisation(s) which understand and can provide for their needs, and with proper confidence in the future of the market, the private sector will be well able to absorb all of the work currently undertaken by the FSS. But these conditions must be met for this to happen.

4.4 Looking further ahead, we need to introduce an imaginative new model for forensic delivery, using infrastructures already in place in police and provider facilities and exploiting the very different requirements of everyday versus complex investigations. We should be pleased to outline our ideas about this if that would be helpful.

5. What are the alternatives to winding-down the Forensic Science Service?

5.1 Alternatives to winding-down the FSS and allowing other providers to pick up the slack might include continuing to support it within the Home Office, selling it off – either in whole or in part, to other providers or, more dramatically, re-nationalising the service.

5.2 Since the emergence of the market in 1991, the FSS has enjoyed preferential treatment both in terms of its status – as part of the Home Office with early knowledge of government intentions/aspirations and initially as ACPO’s ‘preferred supplier’, and in terms of additional Home Office funding. To this extent, the FSS has had many years and a good deal of support to get its house in order and become a properly commercial supplier to the market. Continuing its unfair advantage over other suppliers, especially in the current difficult market conditions would therefore not seem to be a realistic option.

5.3 The safest thing would be to sell off the FSS to other provider(s), possibly splitting routine testing from more complex investigative activities. There are several companies who could successfully take on the routine testing, but there would be more difficulty with finding a suitable home for investigative parts of the business. But whether or not such arrangements are a real option would obviously depend on price, and price would presumably have to acknowledge TUPE arrangements for staff, the condition and contents of laboratories and any risks associated with past performance. We are not sufficiently close to any of this for further comment.

5.4 Re-nationalising the FSS would not appear to be an option. When our criminal justice system relied solely on the FSS before, performance was dogged by long case turnaround times, higher prices than might have been warranted, insufficient engagement with the wider scientific community for new ideas, and a state of mind which too often confused what ‘can
not be done’ with ‘what can not be done by us’. Competition has swept away all of this, and we must not reinvent this particular wheel.

6. So far as they are known, are the arrangements for closing down the Forensic Science Service, making staff redundant and selling its assets adequate?

6.1 The staff are amongst the most valuable of the FSS’s assets. It takes many years to train forensic scientists especially to deal with complex matters, and this is the single most worrying aspect of the closure. With the current dysfunctional market, it is not enough to expect the best of these scientists to find homes with other providers. Many will have lost all confidence in forensic science as a profession – partly from a job security point of view and partly because it no longer offers scientists the same professional challenges it should and once did.

6.2 To this extent, the ‘arrangements’ should include urgent remedial action to protect and improve the market, and satisfactory transition of enough staff and the right staff from the FSS to other appropriate providers.

Declaration of Interests

6.3 Reflecting aspects of Axiom International’s activities, the Company has expressed an interest in understanding arrangements for the disposal of:

- SceneSafe – the FSS’s forensic collection kits and consumables business

- International business such as training and infrastructure development

This interest has been inspired solely by the fact of closure; it formed no part of any pre-existing plan.

Professor Angela Gallop, Chief Executive
Mr Chris Gregg QPM, Managing Director
Axiom International Ltd

11 February 2011

Annex

Axiom International Limited – Company Profile

Axiom International was established in 2010 in response to a growing need from overseas authorities to improve their law enforcement infrastructure, and a recognition of the UK’s historic reputation in this area.

Key members of the Axiom management team are Lord John Stevens – considered by many to be the most successful Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in modern times, Professor Angela Gallop – known equally for setting up and running full scale forensic laboratories and leading some of the UK’s most complex forensic re-investigations, and Chris Gregg QPM – described by his Chief Constable as the finest senior detective the force (West Yorkshire) had ever known.

Working with selected universities, forensic providers and policing agencies and other strategic partners, the Company provides a range of inter-related services including:

- Comprehensive police and forensic assessments – to establish areas for improvement to national and local infrastructure

- Designing and equipping forensic science laboratories – maximising the benefits of modern techniques and working practices

- A full range of forensic science and police training courses – raising standards to meet international best practice

- In-country support – to ensure new skills and facilities are properly integrated into local criminal justice systems

- Powerful forensic and police re-investigations – breathing new life into the most challenging stalled cases

- A unique range of forensic sampling products – to capture the most material for the best evidence

Axiom International Ltd is privately owned.