Forensic Science System “In Crisis” — UK’s House of Lords Sounds the Alarm
A landmark report by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has declared England and Wales’s forensic science system a “national scandal in the making” — warning that mounting backlogs, market monopoly, and eroding independence are placing innocent people at risk of wrongful conviction.
On 17 February 2026, the United Kingdom’s House of Lords Science and Technology Committee published one of the most damning assessments of forensic science provision in recent history. Titled Rebuilding Forensic Science for Criminal Justice: An Urgent Need, the report laid bare a system described by eminent forensic scientist Professor Angela Gallop as one that is “not functioning as it should” — a verdict the Committee said it found “little to contradict.”
The inquiry, which followed up on an equally stark 2019 report from the same committee, concluded that virtually none of the problems flagged seven years ago had been meaningfully addressed — and that several had dramatically worsened. The findings sent shockwaves through the legal and scientific communities and sparked immediate calls for emergency government action.
“As the forensic science system continues to atrophy despite repeated warnings, creeping neglect is beginning to resemble a shocking abdication of responsibility by the Government, and is a national scandal in the making. If this decline is allowed to continue, further miscarriages of justice are inevitable.”— Lord Mair CBE, Chair, House of Lords Science and Technology Committee
Background: How Did We Get Here?
The roots of the present crisis trace back to a fateful decision made in late 2010, when the then-government announced the closure of the Forensic Science Service (FSS) — the publicly funded body that had once given England and Wales a world-leading position in forensic science. The FSS held a 60% share of the forensic market at the time of closure; it officially shut its doors in March 2012, despite widespread warnings about the consequences.
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2010
Government announces closure of the Forensic Science Service (FSS), citing losses of ~£2 million per month.
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2012
FSS formally closes. Forensic services fragment across 43 police forces and private companies. Concerns raised about quality, oversight, and independence.
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2019
House of Lords issues first major reform report — A Blueprint for Change. Government acknowledges problems; little substantive action follows.
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June 2025
Westminster Commission on Forensic Science publishes Pulling Out of the Graveyard Spiral. Calls for national strategy; highlights Peter Sullivan case — the UK’s longest miscarriage of justice.
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January 2026
Home Office Policing Reform White Paper published, making broad references to national forensics restructuring but lacking detail or timelines.
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17 Feb 2026
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee publishes Rebuilding Forensic Science for Criminal Justice: An Urgent Need. System declared a national scandal in the making.
The Six Major Crisis Points
The 2026 report identifies six interlocking failures that together constitute what Lord Mair describes as a “dysfunctional pillar of criminal justice.”
① A Near-Monopoly Commercial Market
Perhaps the most alarming structural finding concerns market concentration. Over 80% of all external forensic science services in England and Wales are now provided by a single company — Eurofins. This near-monopoly position has raised urgent concerns about quality and range of service provision, the resilience of the national forensic supply chain, and the ability of the Forensic Science Regulator to impose effective sanctions. Peers warned bluntly: if Eurofins were ever to exit the UK market, the consequences for criminal justice could be catastrophic.
② Police In-House Provision & Loss of Independence
As private providers have consolidated, an increasing volume of forensic work has moved in-house to individual police forces — 43 of them, each operating with different standards, funding levels, and oversight mechanisms. This shift has generated profound concerns about scientific impartiality.
The Committee warned that police-conducted analysis carries an inherent risk of “unconscious bias” — where forensic conclusions may, even inadvertently, be shaped by investigative assumptions rather than neutral scientific analysis. Policing Minister Sarah Jones herself acknowledged the severity of the oversight vacuum: “The thing I found most shocking, as a new minister in the space, is the lack of real understanding of what is actually going on across the country on forensics.”
“Police are not scientists. There should be real independence and there has to be impartiality, and the science should be done by scientists. Everyone else around the world has recognised that you cannot turn police officers into forensic scientists. They are two different professions, and it is too risky in terms of impartiality and independence.”
③ The Digital Forensics Backlog Crisis
Digital evidence now sits at the heart of a vast proportion of criminal investigations. Yet the system’s ability to process it has completely failed to keep pace. The backlog of digital devices awaiting forensic analysis currently exceeds 20,000 units — a figure that has “barely improved for years,” according to the report, despite the same concern being prominently raised in the 2019 inquiry.
Every unanalysed device may represent a delayed — or denied — justice outcome. And a new frontier of risk is emerging: the Committee specifically flagged the growing threat of deepfaked evidence — digitally manipulated video, audio, or images — for which current forensic methods have no reliable detection capability.
④ Fragmented & Failing Evidence Storage
Since the closure of the FSS in 2012, no centralised, independent national repository for forensic evidence has been established. Responsibility for storage has been distributed haphazardly across 43 police forces and a collection of private providers — each applying different standards, retaining evidence for different periods, and operating without consistent national oversight.
The report documents cases of exhibits being lost, improperly stored, or rendered inadmissible. These failures do not merely undermine individual prosecutions — they eliminate the possibility of cold-case reviews and prevent the correction of miscarriages of justice.
“Reporting this case is my biggest regret. You shouldn’t have to go through a lot to get justice when you’ve already been through a lot… I feel like I’m more traumatised from the case than the actual incident.” — Sarah’s forensic evidence was lost. Her case, seven years on, remains unresolved.
⑤ Inequality of Arms in the Courtroom
Justice depends not only on the quality of evidence gathered by the prosecution — it depends equally on the ability of the defence to challenge it. Defence forensic experts are underfunded and paid substantially less through legal aid than their prosecution counterparts. The pool of qualified defence experts is shrinking. Access to forensic expertise for defendants — particularly those reliant on legal aid — is becoming a “postcode lottery.”
The Committee called this an issue of “equality of arms” — echoing a fundamental principle of fair trial law. Without equivalent access to credible forensic scrutiny, convictions may rest on unchallenged science of questionable validity.
⑥ The Disappearance of Specialist Skills
The 2026 report sounded the alarm over the gradual extinction of specialist forensic disciplines. Forensic specialisms such as fibre analysis and footprint analysis have become commercially unviable in the fragmented, price-pressured market that replaced the FSS.
Professor Angela Gallop cited the murders of Stephen Lawrence and the “Coastal Path Murders” as iconic cases where textile fibre evidence proved decisive: “We would never have solved those without textile fibres.” If such expertise disappears, future investigations may simply lack the scientific tools they need.
“On a global scale, the UK is significantly behind other jurisdictions. A lot of Scandinavia have done some very forward-looking work in DNA identification which we’re just not able to do here. We can’t afford the instrumentation to begin with, let alone the research.”
What the Committee is Demanding: Key Recommendations
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee presented a series of concrete, urgent recommendations, calling on the Government to act immediately rather than wait for the uncertain timetable of the Policing Reform White Paper.
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1
Establish a National Institute for Forensic Science — to oversee best practice, drive R&D, preserve specialist skills, and safeguard forensic independence from police influence. The Committee said this should be created in 2026, without waiting for wider policing reforms.
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2
Tackle market concentration and the Eurofins near-monopoly — conduct a formal assessment of concentration risk; introduce measures to lower barriers to entry; ensure contracts pay fair prices to sustain a resilient market.
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3
Ensure independence from police in all forensic analysis — any new national forensic service must operate structurally independently from policing structures, following the Scottish “sterile corridor” model.
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4
Create a national, independent evidence storage facility — to replace the current fragmented patchwork of 43 police forces and private providers holding forensic material to inconsistent standards.
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5
Review legal aid rates for defence forensic experts — the Ministry of Justice must address the structural inequity that leaves defence experts underpaid and the defence community “withering away.”
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6
Address the digital forensics backlog with R&D investment — develop trusted AI and digital tools to reduce the 20,000+ device backlog, and urgently build capacity to detect deepfaked evidence.
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7
Preserve specialist forensic skills — develop a credible national plan to sustain disciplines such as fibre and footprint analysis that cannot survive on commercial terms alone.
Government Response: Too Little, Too Vague, Too Slow?
The January 2026 Policing Reform White Paper acknowledged the need for reform and proposed that a new National Police Service would take over responsibility for forensics. The Committee welcomed this “direction of travel” — but expressed deep frustration at the absence of concrete detail, particularly regarding how forensic independence would be safeguarded and what timelines were envisaged.
The Government has been warned repeatedly about these same systemic failures — in 2019, in multiple interim reviews, and in the June 2025 Westminster Commission report. Each time, ministers acknowledged the problems. Each time, substantive reform failed to materialise.
“We believe that more miscarriages of justice are absolutely inevitable. We spent a lot of time looking at near misses — cases rescued on the brink of going through our court process by a forensic scientist employed by the defence. That is happening less and less frequently.”— Professor Angela Gallop, Renowned Forensic Scientist & Westminster Commission Witness
Why This Matters: The Human Cost
Behind every statistic in this report is a human story. Thirty thousand collapsed prosecutions between 2020 and 2024 means thirty thousand victims, witnesses, defendants, and families caught in a broken system — some denied justice, some unjustly accused, some wrongly convicted. The Peter Sullivan case — a man imprisoned for 38 years for a murder he did not commit, finally exonerated in May 2025 — stands as the starkest symbol of what failing forensic science ultimately produces.
The crisis is not invisible. It is not theoretical. It is unfolding, case by case, courtroom by courtroom, across England and Wales every day.
What This Means for Aspiring Forensic Scientists
For students and early-career professionals in forensic science, the implications of this crisis are both sobering and clarifying. The demand for reform — and for high-calibre, independent, rigorously trained forensic practitioners — has never been greater. The House of Lords report’s call for a National Institute for Forensic Science signals a potential new era of investment, standards, and structure in the profession.
The crisis also underscores a fundamental truth: forensic science is not a bureaucratic function. It is the interface between scientific truth and judicial outcome. When it fails, the entire architecture of criminal justice is compromised. The budding forensic expert entering the field today does so at a pivotal moment — with an opportunity, and arguably a duty, to help rebuild what has been broken.
