Examination of witnesses

Dr Paul Gibson, Jayne Meir and Jo Osborne.

Q64 The Chair: Good morning and welcome to the Select Committee on Science and Technology. In our first session, we have three witnesses, who are coming in online: Dr Paul Gibson, who is the chief constable of Lincolnshire Police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s forensic portfolio lead; Jayne Meir, who is the deputy chief constable of Northumbria Police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s digital forensic lead; and Jo Osborne, who is the senior commercial director at BlueLight Commercial. You are all very welcome.

As I think you all know, this present inquiry follows up on our 2018 inquiry in which we investigated forensic science and the criminal justice system in England and Wales; at the time, the Forensic Capability Network was just being set up. It would be very good if you could set out for us the role that you believe the Forensic Capability Network now plays; what work is ongoing; and whether it has improved the delivery of forensic sciences in practice. More broadly, we would be interested to know what changes you have seen in the forensic science system since 2018. Also, what do you see as the major challenges facing forensic science in England and Wales right now? Let us start with you, Dr Gibson; I will then ask the other two witnesses to come in as well.

Dr Paul Gibson: Thank you, Chair, and good morning, colleagues. I will start with the Forensic Capability Network. I was involved in the initial part of setting up the network, which was first established back in 2020. It went through a strategic review in 2022 and has been operating in its current guise since 2023.

The FCN, as we call it, is an established national forensic capability. It is certainly relied on by forces and other stakeholders to assist policing. The FCN’s remit is to undertake activities nationally once, for the benefit of all forces, rather than repeating initiatives 43 times. Let me give you a flavour of its remit. It works on quality and compliance. It assists forces in meeting the regulator’s code of practice and the necessary accreditation. It has certainly helped me in NPCC support because I have chaired many critical incidents over the past six or seven years, particularly with regard to the forensic marketplace. It is involved in facilitating and co-ordinating research and innovation across policing. It assists the marketplace in the procurement of physical and digital forensics. It assists Jayne in her role as the national DF lead, in terms of national performance frameworks and other initiatives.

I shall now move on to the second question, if I may. What changes have I seen since 2018? I picked up the forensic marketplace portfolio back in 2018; I have been in and among the portfolio since then. Some of the biggest areas that we have seen include the fact that, obviously, technology and digital forensics now have a touchpoint in almost every investigation within policing. Obviously that introduces considerable volume, and the volume and complexity of digital evidence are growing. We have devices that are becoming infinitely more voluminous in terms of the data they hold and the complexity in which they hold it. We have also started to see increased automation across advanced analytics, digital forensics and other services. A big issue is accreditation and regulatory compliance, which the Forensic Science Regulator has introduced in order to ensure that safe and robust evidence enters the criminal justice system; that has been applied across policing, as well as for private and commercial providers. I think that that covers the second question.

On the major challenges that I see facing forensics in England and Wales right now, my portfolio has a number of sub-portfolio leads ranging from digital forensics—Jayne is here, of course—to quality and regulatory compliance, marketplace sustainability, workforce retention and well-being. In essence, those sub-leads report to me to assist in making sure both that we are cognisant of the risks in forensic science and that we are putting the correct safeguards and processes in place to try to mitigate those risks. We are grappling with many challenges, such as deepfakes, synthetic media, AI and digital forensics, but this might be a good point for me to pause and ask some of our technical experts for their input on these areas.

Q65 The Chair: Thank you very much. Ms Meir, would you like to enlarge on some of those points and answer the questions I asked at the beginning?

Jayne Meir: Yes. As Dr Gibson stressed, what the FCN has been able to do is support the digital forensics community to ensure that, as it gains accreditation in relation to digital forensics activity, there is the consistency and the capability to get that accreditation; it also provides the necessary support and engagement with the Forensic Science Regulator. Particularly of note is the fact that it is now working on a triage framework so that the Forensic Science Regulator can be satisfied that some of the front-line triaging of digital devices is compliant with its expectations and enables a broad range of officers and staff to undertake that activity on the front line.

The FCN has also been able to help us embed a performance framework across our digital forensics units—that is, across 43 forces. This has been very tricky because each force does things in a slightly different way. When you are trying to measure performance, you need consistency in language. You will understand “backlog”, I think, but what does that mean in terms of digital devices? At what stage do we measure them entering into the digital forensics process? Where are they in that system at any stage? That has helped us understand where some of our risks and challenges are.

Most recently, we have been working with the FCN on understanding which digital forensics tools are available to us, what the strength of the marketplace is and how we may tackle emerging risks in the digital forensics portfolio—particularly in relation to deepfakes, which have been mentioned. We now support a Home Office task and finish group looking specifically at AI in the criminal justice system, in terms of both benefits and the potential corruption of evidence in the system. The Forensic Capability Network has been able to support us in doing that on behalf of 43 forces, enabling us to speak as one voice and to seek improvements in the way in which we deal with digital forensics material.

The specific difference in digital forensics is, I suppose, the pace of change—that is, the need for policing and other government bodies to keep up with the challenges of emerging technologies. Accreditation sometimes creates issues for us, in terms of new phones, new computers, new tools and new techniques being needed, but, obviously, the requirement for effective accreditation is to ensure that evidence is verified and can support criminal justice activity.

That is how the FCN has been supporting us and what some of the major challenges have been, but I would be more than happy to pick up on those in more detail should you need it.

Q66 The Chair: Thank you very much. We are going to ask a lot more questions. We are also going to talk about procurement, which is very important for you, Ms Osborne, in terms of BlueLight’s role. Perhaps you could introduce yourself at this stage and tell us a bit about BlueLight; we will then move on to our more general questions.

Jo Osborne: Good morning, all. I am one of the senior commercial directors from BlueLight Commercial. It was established in 2020. We are a not-for-profit, wholly-owned policing company, limited by guarantee. We are owned by the police and crime commissioners and all work that we do is directed by them. We are essentially there to do things once instead of 43 times across the key areas of spend—everything from fleet to aviation, uniform and obviously forensics, which is what we are here to talk about. Since we were established in 2020, forensics came in around 2022. That was not an initial category. There was a transfer of responsibility. I guess, from a forensics point, we are trying to look at things once. That single voice to the market that Jayne just mentioned is important. We had very disparate responses with people competing in the market at the same time.

Across both digital and physical forensics, because we cover both elements, we have been putting processes and routes to market in place in partnership with colleagues from FCN. It is worth mentioning that we work closely with it. It has, if you like, the technical experts who help with developing specifications, compliance with the code and accreditation issues. That is where BlueLight was established. We are a contracting authority and that is why we are set up as we are, so that we can cover on behalf of all.

The Chair: That is a useful start. Thank you. We are going to go on to more detailed questions about procurement of forensic services. I am sure that you will be able to help us on that.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Just before I go on to procurement questions, perhaps Ms Meir could fill us in a bit more on a point she made that I did not quite understand about when a device gets registered and enters the backlog queue.

Jayne Meir: The term “backlog” has been used when we come to digital forensics devices. When officers attend an incident, they may seize mobile phones, laptops or various different digital media. They are obviously now in police receipt. But when a device is submitted to a digital forensics unit, it may be some weeks thereafter. That is because an investigative owner will need to set a strategy and decide which digital devices are relevant to the investigation, and which ones should be examined first. They will go through a triage process and enter into a digital forensics unit, potentially a few weeks after they have been seized—if not, perhaps a number of months later because the criminal prosecution service asked for a device to be looked at.

Once it is received into a digital forensics unit, it is always triaged to identify the information needed from it and what processes should be used to extract the relevant information. At that point, we would potentially show the device being received into a digital forensics unit and then prioritised. Normally, when it has arrived in that unit and a prioritisation process has been undertaken, it is then added to what we might class as the work queue. But each force in the country has probably described that process—from the officer receiving the device in the first instance to the original triage, and then submission to a digital forensics unit—in a slightly different way. Therefore, when we would ask, “How many devices have you got waiting to analyse?”, they may be counting things at a different stage of the process. We have to try and get a consistent approach for the description of the business process from initial receipt through triage and basically ownership by a digital forensics unit, in order that we can describe the numbers in a more effective way.

Q67 Baroness Young of Old Scone: Thank you very much. Can I talk about the concerns that we identified in the original inquiry, and that the Westminster commission identified, about whether we actually have a market for forensics at the moment? Physical forensics and digital are probably slightly different, but a lot of work is being done in force, particularly for physical forensics. There is one large provider in Eurofins, whose chief executive we discovered also chairs the trade body, as far as I could see; perhaps I am wrong in that. This does not feel that it is too much of a market at the moment. Is that a problem for you, and if not, what mechanisms are there for ensuring that there is adequate competition and that somebody looks at the market as a whole? Perhaps Dr Gibson would like to start.

Dr Paul Gibson: Certainly. I will give my view and then perhaps Jo can add any further detail, if need be. At the moment, we have a much more collegiate approach in terms of working with the market. As you say, it is a small market and there are barriers to entry, including things like the level of profitability in the market, as well as things like accreditation and regulation which need to be to a set standard, of course. This has led to a relatively constrained market. So there are not significant levels of competition within the UK. We have in the past around some critical incidents looked at the possibility of utilising overseas markets, although there are some challenges within that. I know that has been looked at by the FCN again and actively considered.

Therefore, the levels of competition are perhaps not where we want them to be. As you have rightly articulated, we have a relatively dominant market at present, with Eurofins and Cellmark being held by the same company group. What I would say from my time as the NPCC lead for the marketplace is that we have seen many critical incidents over the years, some of which have ended up in COBRA-type environments. That is significant. But with the Forensic Capability Network, with BlueLight Commercial working with the NPCC, and now the director of forensics for the Home Office, we have a much greater infrastructure to support in terms of managing the market.

Is there work to be done? Yes, of course there is. But our aim of policing being an intelligent customer that speaks with one voice, which Jo alluded to earlier, is now coming to the fore because we have managed to get a single procurement route to the commercial market. That allows us to make sure that we can manage contracts much more effectively in terms of performance and turnaround times. It allows us to predict demand and, therefore, suppliers can bring capacity up or down according to policing’s need. While there is some work to do, I have certainly seen a step change over the past six or seven years in which I have been involved in this area of the business. Hopefully that is helpful, but I am happy to take any further questions.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: When procurement decisions are being made, is a constant eye kept on the overall market and on whether the competition is producing better results for you? Are the needs expanded—that is, more players in the market?

Dr Paul Gibson: We certainly have an overview and strategic viewpoint on the market because we want a flexible and agile market, one that gives value for money but allows for sufficient profit to make companies attracted to this business. We take the overview but because there are so few players that have the accreditation or will to enter the market, I guess that we have to work with what we have. Jo will be able to talk about this more but, in terms of any dominance in the market, that is where we put measures in place, such as open book accounting, making sure we are keeping a close eye on procurements, and making sure that procurements are sequenced—in order, co-ordinated and not conflicting with each other. That, therefore, allows us some way in which to manage the market. But we are constrained by the number of suppliers that are prepared to enter the market itself.

The Chair: It is our understanding that there is only one supplier. Is that right?

Dr Paul Gibson: In physical, Eurofins and Cellmark are about 80% of the market. Then you have other players like Key Forensic and others that make up the remaining 20%. Again, Jo may be able to assist with more details, should you wish.

The Chair: Yes. I am sorry. When I say one supplier, I really meant one major, or the major, supplier. Ms Osborne, would you like to add something?

Jo Osborne: Yes, you are quite right, there is one major supplier. They are sister companies, Eurofins and Cellmark, owned by the same group, but they share managing directors and commercial directors, and there are three other smaller providers.

We have a single route to market—a dynamic purchasing system, which is a type of framework. As Dr Gibson mentioned, we have worked really closely to get the single voice to market. BlueLight will run competitions. We ensure that they are not run at the same time, which was happening in the past. The process centres around capacity and capability. We look a lot at market stability before making decisions. The process runs from a qualitative and cost perspective and also an element of social value. We are testing across all those three areas. As I said, before any decisions are made, we work closely with colleagues in force and in FCN to look at allocation, to make sure there is sustainability across the market.

It is not perfect. With the new director of science from the Home Office we will be looking at the next generation, particularly with events that have happened recently for the next generation of procurement. We are about to start that piece of work in the new year. Barriers to entry remains one of the biggest challenges to us, as was mentioned previously.

We will be looking at how we can develop the market and encourage SMEs in particular to get more involved. We have seen some turbulent times, but we do the best that we can, and without people having to put the cost in bidding numerous times. We aggregate that demand and we forecast as much as we can in this area so that they know the type of demand we are likely to have.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms Meir, would you like to add anything? We are going to talk more about digital forensics. Is there anything you want to add at this point about procurement?

Jayne Meir: What we see as a significant benefit with the support from BlueLight Commercial is how we procure digital forensics tools into forces. We use significant and expensive software so that we can triage digital forensics material. We can also support the digital forensics processes. We have started work on a framework approach with BlueLight Commercial, which means 43 forces can use the buying power of a central procurement framework to improve the purchasing power of forces.

Through that process, we are also able to become, as Dr Gibson said, more of an intelligent customer in the requirements that we have from policing into providers, to ensure that we get improved software and tools to improve the digital forensics processes, which all goes to reducing costs in forces.

Q68 Lord Stern of Brentford: As you can see, we are trying to understand the market, and you have been very helpful. Of course, the market we have been discussing is for external services, and there is obviously a great deal that is done internally. Could you give us a feel for the balance of how much you put out and how much you do in-house?

We have made some progress in looking at the data on how much is done outside, because that is more public, but do you collect data on how much of these services is done inside? Could you give us a feel for the balance between the two? Obviously, when you are talking about markets, one thing about them is how they work for external suppliers, but the internal story is clearly a big part of that market. Could you help us with that please?

The Chair: Who would like to start on that? Dr Gibson?

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes, that is absolutely fine. When we look at the physical forensic market, it is largely outsourced with regard to specialist provision, in the order of around £60 million or so. But, obviously, with physical forensics we also have certain processes and capacity that needs to be maintained locally—crime scene investigators and that sort of thing. It is a blended approach from that point of view.

If we look at the digital forensic marketplace, it probably works in the opposite, because digital forensics has evolved over the years within forces and therefore there is a less mature market in what is outsourced to external providers. But, of course, Jo just mentioned the dynamic purchasing system and the work we do to make sure that we are acting as that intelligent customer we have articulated.

I would approximate that the internal demand is around £500 million to £550 million in terms of cost. But I agree that that is much more difficult to ascertain because it is, in essence, co-ordinated within the budgets of the forces. That being said, we are, in essence, co-ordinating information trawls through the portfolios and through both BlueLight Commercial and the FCN to ensure that we have as accurate a picture as we can with regard to spend, processes et cetera.

There is more work to be done, certainly with regard to the internal market and understanding what that cost base is, and with the director of forensic services who has been appointed, Amanda-Jane Balfour. We are working very closely with her. She has only been in post a few weeks but one of the things we are talking about is the forensic marketplace strategic plan, developed by the Forensic Capability Network, which looks at various strands of how we deliver forensics for policing in England and Wales. That involves commercial providers, in-house provision and also those things that may be beneficial to be able to deliver from a national line point of view.

Some of that work is being undertaken, but we need further resource and money to be able to take it work further forward. So, we are having active discussions with the director of forensic services within the Home Office to incorporate that as part of her plan to transform forensics here in England and Wales. I hope that helps.

Lord Stern of Brentford: It does help, but can I just ask for one bit of clarification? You mentioned £500 million or £550 million or so. Is that the physical side or physical and digital?

Dr Paul Gibson: That would be an amalgamation but, as I am sure you will appreciate, it is an approximation, because we do not have as detailed financial information. That is our approximation across both areas.

Lord Stern of Brentford: So it is probably fair to say that the majority is done in-house?

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes, I think so. That is partly because of the digital forensics growing up in-house. But there are things that need to be delivered locally, with local flexibility according to local priorities, and that will be a cost that would be built into the force envelope, if that makes sense, from a financial point of view.

Lord Stern of Brentford: Can I ask just one further question around the meaning of what it is that is contracted out? We heard from one of our witnesses of the importance in forensics of end-to-end, beginning with the crime scene and going all the way through. It strikes us that there is formal testing that you can do in laboratories that is moderately straightforward to contract out. But is there any sense in which you can contract out the whole end-to-end story?

Dr Paul Gibson: That would be a possibility, but it would involve quite a significant change. You will be aware of the Forensic Science Service—

Lord Stern of Brentford: I am not trying to encourage that. I am just trying to understand the process. Are you telling us that it is quite difficult to think about how you contract out that end-to-end story?

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes, I think so. The model would always be that your front-line CSIs are usually force-based, for obvious reasons. As to what employment mechanisms they have, you could envisage that that could be part of a bigger legal entity rather than being employed within forces. It is a very pertinent question and something that has been actively considered as part of the White Paper and forensic reform, which now has its own discrete strand within the reform work. We are considering all eventualities about how we can best transform the system for the benefit of the victims of crime whom we serve.

Lord Stern of Brentford: Thank you very much. Ms Meir or Ms Osborne, is there anything you would like to add?

Jo Osborne: Just something on the state of the market at the moment and why we have not looked at that in the past. But I agree with Paul that it is really pertinent to explore that, given that we will be looking at the new commercial strategy across both digital and physical.

Jayne Meir: I agree. The end-to-end processes are complex—particularly in digital forensics, where you often have police officers seizing the original devices and potentially triaging them at a local level. However, police reform and forensics reform are a significant opportunity for us to see what operating models would be most efficient and effective. There are definite improvements that can be made, because the current 43-force model is not as efficient as it could be.

Lord Stern of Brentford: That is very helpful; thank you very much.

Q69 Baroness Walmsley: My question is initially for Ms Osborne but I am sure that the other witnesses will have an opinion. Let me read one sentence from the way in which BlueLight describes itself. It says: “Running forensic contracts and frameworks nationally strengthens a fragile forensic marketplace and saves policing significant money and resources, while still giving local forces flexibility over which services they use”. Can you say how well you think that is working when, as we have just heard, we predominantly have one buyer and one major provider? In fact, we heard from Eurofins that very little of its work—9%, I think—is for the defence. We also have a race to the bottom on price, which, as we have heard, means a reduction in the quantity and quality of the services that are available.

Can you tell us steps you are taking—in conjunction with, perhaps, the Home Office, the new director and forensic science providers—to introduce sustainable contracting and realistic costing in order to sustain a much healthier market in forensic services than we have at the moment?

Jo Osborne: With the situation as it was, we had 43 forces contracting through very disparate methods, which was adding cost to an already fragile market. With the work that we have done to create the one voice, we have been able to introduce standardised products and specifications and the same process, so that suppliers get used to that. On the physical side, although there are only five suppliers in the market currently, we have managed to maintain them, in that they are still there.

We have also introduced indexation. You have probably been told about the race to the bottom, which you alluded to, and unfair pricing. We have looked to standardise pricing. We have looked to introduce indexation, so prices have increased. I am not saying that there is not more to do on that.

We are also looking at strategic supplier relationship management. We are working really closely with those five key suppliers to make sure that we understand demand and capacity. They know where to come; they are not being pulled in 43 directions. I would say that there is still work to do but, although the market needs to grow, we have stabilised it for now.

As I mentioned earlier, market development—particularly in terms of bringing in SMEs—is something that we would want to do. Reform gives us that opportunity. With the new director, we are looking to start developing a new commercial strategy that will underpin the work she does. Although things are not perfect, we have maintained the suppliers in the market and given them a share of the work that they are able to cope with, from a capacity perspective.

Baroness Walmsley: So they are hanging in there by their teeth but are not able to grow. Is that right?

Jo Osborne: They are not just hanging in there by their teeth. They were at one point, but it has gotten significantly better from since then—not least because of, as I said, the price differentials. The recent round of competitions has seen a fair share of the work. Obviously, capacity does become an issue—we have to measure that—and they must be accreditors as well. Some of them are not for some of the lots; obviously we need to make sure that that is in place.

Baroness Walmsley: Do either of your police colleagues want to comment on that?

Dr Paul Gibson: Briefly, when we get to the new financial year, we will have all police forces in England and Wales going through the same procurement route for forensic services from external suppliers. That does not sound like a massive achievement, but it is. As Jo has alluded to, that allows us to be far more cognisant of keeping the market as buoyant as possible. There is consideration of how to apportion the lots on the different criteria of the procurement, but the benefit is that you are doing it from one viewpoint rather than from multiple viewpoints that cannot see each other. Having one lens looking into how we procure forensic services, particularly for physical forensics, is a real coup and a real positive for us, although I accept that there is more work to do.

Jayne Meir: I agree that, fundamentally, our ability to engage with the market as one voice is seeing significant improvements. We are now in a position where, certainly from a software and tooling perspective, BlueLight Commercial will be able to support us in that.

On engagement with the marketplace, we are working with the FCN on the number of devices we put into commercial providers to try to level the submissions into the marketplace because, at the moment, it can be erratic depending on forces’ budgets. When forces are constrained financially, they keep things in-house; we are looking to level that off with the marketplace. The FCN works closely with forces and suppliers to work out that demand management more effectively.

Q70 Viscount Stansgate: Good morning. We have been given evidence suggesting that certain specialisms in the physical forensic science area—marks and traces, fibres and certain aspects of forensic toxicology and so on—are at risk of dying out. The NPCC’s submission to our previous inquiry said that work would be undertaken to include “long-term plans to ensure the sustainability of individual forensic disciplines”. What plans have been made to ensure that we have these capabilities available for when they are needed? Is specific funding set aside for this?

Dr Paul Gibson: Again, that is a very relevant question. We are well aware of the existing risks to the provision of some niche services, including, as you say, marks and traces and some aspects of toxicology. An element of this is the fact that these analyses are not particularly profitable for the commercial market; that is why, as has rightly been articulated, there is concern around not being able to keep this capability.

We are very keen, from a policing perspective, to retain the capability because it is part of our armoury, in terms of our forensics analysis to serve victims of crime. I alluded to it briefly earlier but we have the strategic marketplace plan, which includes provision to ensure the sustainability of niche services. Some of these actions are already under way but, as has been mentioned, others require investment and resources in order to complete this piece of work fully.

This is likely to be part of the forensic director’s initial plan for delivery. We will work closely with her on that to make sure that we can safeguard these really important analyses so that they can continue to support our investigations and we can give our very best quality of service.

Jo Osborne: It is a fair question. Although those niche services are included in the framework at the moment, when we start to look at the next generation and the strategy for that, we will need to explore other contractual mechanisms, such as retainers and things like that. We keep discussing this with the providers, in terms of the service provision for now, but there are areas we could improve on within the niche services.

Jayne Meir: The niche service point is less pertinent in the digital forensics world, but it is important to recognise that we need commercial suppliers to research and develop tools to help us, in policing, to undertake digital forensics work in-house. The requirement of the marketplace here is very much about that speed of development, which is how we get the best bang for our buck, as we say. Fundamentally for us, if we do not have a healthy supplier market in digital forensic software and tooling, that is where we will slow down our ability to interrogate what are becoming more and more sophisticated devices with significant amounts of material within each one.

Viscount Stansgate: I have a very quick follow-up question. Do you worry that in the future there may be miscarriages of justice because of the lack of some of these physical forensic science disciplines?

Dr Paul Gibson: From my perspective, all our forensic science disciplines are covered by the regulator, which is something that has obviously changed since your last inquiry. Moving towards a regulated accredited service across all of forensic science gives us significant safeguards to make sure that the quality and validity of our evidence is good.

Q71 Baroness Neville-Jones: With a significant amount of the forensic work being done by the police force, you obviously become a very powerful player in the market itself. What measures are you taking to safeguard against the risks that inevitably arise of being a dominant element in a marketplace? In particular, what are you doing to ensure that the tests and work you carry out is impartial? You are deciding not only which tests but also how they should be conducted, which gives, it seems to me, very considerable weight to what you consider to be important.

Does that lead to a situation or danger that you begin to mould the market? That is to say, do you have the effect of deciding what the market does and what it fails to do because you do not request it, so in effect you become a market maker as well as a market taker and performer?

Also, could you say something about what my colleague mentioned, which was that something like 9% of the forensic work is done for the defence? How does that square with equality of arms between prosecution and defence? It is potentially an extremely worrying situation if the defence is not getting access to forensic science that it should be allowed to have to demonstrate its case. Dr Gibson, perhaps you would like to start off.

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes, certainly. The provision of forensic science, particularly from a physical point of view—I will let Jayne talk about the digital—is a blended market. The most complex, high-volume, more significant analyses take part in the commercial market. The element of the market that exists in-house is more simple types of analysis and also the collection of exhibits from crime scene investigators, et cetera.

With the activities that take place in-house, the staff and processes, again, need to adhere to stringent quality controls, which, again, links to the regulation and the legislation that has been produced from that point of view. That also contains competency assessments for our individuals who are involved in that particular line of work.

With regard to the director of forensic services and the work going forward, there is an anticipation that forensics can be delivered on a national, regional and local basis with different tiers of service that sit within each of those realms. That is something we are working through as part of the transformation plan.

On the defence question, as far as I am aware, the defence obviously has access to forensic supplies to complete the necessary tests. Unfortunately, I do not have any further detail regarding any occasions where it is asked for and there is no capacity to do it. It is certainly not something that has come across my desk as a significant risk, but I can appreciate why you asked the question. I will let Jo and Jayne add to that, if that is okay.

Jayne Meir: As I said, the marketplace for digital forensics is slightly different in that it is more about routine examination of mobile phones and computers and is often an outflow of demand from forces into the marketplace. Therefore, it is not necessarily the niche or specialist services. What is essential for us is the ability of suppliers to develop software capability that we can then procure to use to unencrypt material, unlock phones and triage material and large amounts of digital devices. There is good competition in that marketplace, but we could obviously always seek to engender more.

As for the ability of the defence to access its own digital forensics experts, I have not come across any issues with its ability to do that. The defence is also able to look in detail at the forensics reports that are done around digital forensics. But because we have the Forensic Science Regulator, who is ensuring that the digital forensics units are fully accredited in the work that they are doing, there is also greater confidence that the digital forensics products that are being put into the criminal justice evidence chain are robust and produced in a consistent manner.

The defence has the ability to scrutinise those reports and the activity of any digital forensics investigator and is also able to look at the devices themselves and utilise its own digital forensics experts should it wish to. The demand is outstripping supply in all areas because of the growth of digital material, but I do not see that there have been any issues with the defence being able to gain that capability.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Ms Osborne, you mentioned in a previous answer that you developed a standardised product. How does that square with what we have also heard, which is that the more complex investigations are the ones that you tend to outsource? How do you combine standardisation with what is described as being more complex?

Jo Osborne: The arrangements allow for that. They allow for the supplier to use its expertise in a managed service so that it can determine what is the best process or procedures to use to get the outcomes that would be required. It allows for that flexibility. It allows for the simple test through to the full case management. There are a range of services within the framework that can be offered and, like I said, they vary. There is the ability to use the supplier expertise.

Sometimes, budget constraints do not allow for that to be as full as it might be, and there are still disparate approaches to the commissioning of work, which the director of forensics at the Home Office and Dr Gibson in the portfolio will be looking at under the reform to make sure that there is not a postcode lottery.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Can I just ask you—perhaps all three of you—a question? You give the impression that although the market is not perfect, it is pretty much doing its job and there is no real cause for worry on the issues I have raised with you. Is that your position? Is that your view? Dr Gibson?

Dr Paul Gibson: The market is in a better place than it was when I picked up the portfolio six or seven years ago.

Baroness Neville-Jones: That does not mean it is good.

Dr Paul Gibson: There is still an awful lot of room for improvement. We have the thinking, confidence and plans to take that forward and I think it will be a prominent period over the next two or three years, working with the Home Office to transform our way of thinking to see what is possible. There is a lot of transform that we can introduce to improve things further exponentially. It is okay at present and is better than it was, but there is more work to do.

Baroness Neville-Jones: I should like to explore that.

Q72 Baroness Willis of Summertown: I should like to take this down a slightly different route. These questions are really illuminating. This is one to do with consistency of training and understanding about the forensic approaches across the 43 different forces. Is the training that everybody gets the same? Does everyone have the same level of understanding of what is currently available? How do the different forces become aware of the new technologies coming through and how things are changing, like the understanding of DNA and how detailed it is now, to a point where it can almost sort of wrap you up in another layer of problems? Dr Gibson, can you comment on that first?

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes, of course. There are accredited training courses that we make sure our people attend. We measure their competence. That will obviously differ according to which discipline you are in. The second element is about the regulation. Compliance with the codes of practice for the regulator is exceptionally stringent in terms of how much work you need to do to make sure that you are adhering to the codes. That gives a high degree of standardisation in how we are delivering. Adherence to the codes and the accreditation in physical forensics is more advanced than in digital forensics and areas such as CCTV at this moment in time, albeit that is starting to progress as well.

In terms of good practice, there are pockets of it. Even within my own region, the East Midlands Special Operations Unit has a single forensics hub that serves the five forces of the East Midlands. It is the same in Yorkshire, the Humber and other areas. There is more that we can do to make sure that good practice is shared, albeit that when we talk about DNA capabilities we have the DNA database. Again, we are working hard to consider how we can increase the specificity of DNA, utilising things like Y-STR down the male line, without getting into lots of detail about scientific procedures. That could give us much higher levels of specificity around use of DNA in particular types of investigation. There are pockets of excellent innovation and creativity. As part and parcel of bringing together BlueLight, FCN and the Home Office in a more structured way, that will give us the opportunity to make sure we are identifying that good practice, sharing it and doing so with the Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser, which is an important player, certainly in terms of stimulating innovation within the market.

Baroness Willis of Summertown: Can I slightly change that? We have heard from previous witnesses on the need for an end-to-end process. Others have asked that question. Some of these things you cannot do in isolation. They need to be at the scene and then you move your way through. In the frameworks you are talking about and the training that goes with it, is there that understanding of the need for the end-to-end process?

Jo Osborne: Training is not specifically covered in the framework but there are standardised processes, product codes and so on. There is also case management so that the provider will speak to the individual commissioning force to discuss an approach to get the best outcomes. But it does not currently, as we said earlier, look at the full process from gathering the evidence through to the end. It is the examination part that this current framework covers, and the framework will be collapsed in 2028, in line with the new Procurement Act, which is why we are looking at the next generation and the strategy for that. While we seek innovation and so on, we could look to include training as part of that, but it does not currently cover it.

Baroness Willis of Summertown: Thank you. Ms Meir, do you have anything to add?

Jayne Meir: Yes, the framework that I was describing was in relation to the end-to-end processes you mentioned. The digital forensics activity that happens in a digital forensics unit is being accredited in forces, as Dr Gibson said, for computers and mobile phones. That is happening to ISO standards and the FSR is reviewing that. Different forces are at different maturity levels in terms of getting accreditation for all the various activities they perform. However, what is not currently accredited is when an officer seizes a device at an address—for example, from somebody when they are searched—or what they may do in a police station using a kiosk where they triage and take material from that device. We are looking at a pragmatic approach, because this is done by large numbers of officers and staff across policing to ensure that they have the right framework—that is, the right processes in place to follow. That will need to be supported by training for front-line staff. All the digital forensics units have training to do the digital forensics activities that they are accredited for. What happens before it gets to the unit is now the focus of our activity to make sure that it is as consistent as it can be when delivered on a universal scale.

Q73 Baroness Northover: This comes back to the earlier questions relating to unconscious bias and looking, as it were, at and for evidence in a certain way because of the role of the police here and the risk potentially of miscarriages of justice. The Westminster commission, as you will be aware, has said that, in the long run, forensic science should be removed from the supervision of the police altogether. Do you feel this would be worthwhile and realistic? What would need to happen to make this a reality? Linked to that, do you see any merit in the Scottish model whereby forensic services are delivered independently, or at least at arm’s length from the police? If you see merit in that, what would need to happen in practice to establish that in England and Wales?

Dr Paul Gibson: In terms of removing forensic science from the supervision of the police altogether, we will await the White Paper, which will assist with our approach to forensic reform. That is certainly a possible model that could be delivered.

It is a good analogy to talk about the Scottish model because we work closely with Police Scotland. The amalgamation of Police Scotland clearly had an impact upon how forensics would then need to be configured subsequently to be able to serve all of Scotland. I mentioned earlier that the national, regional or local analogy is important because, if we take something like the forensic marketplace strategic plan, there is definitely room for national co-ordination, national procurement and delivery of some national services. Whether that would need to get to a Police Scotland model where that is based very much upon force amalgamations, we will wait and see what the wider police reform looks like.

There are excellent opportunities that will come through from the White Paper. That is where, as previously mentioned, we need to work closely with the Home Office and FCN, BlueLight Commercial and the Police Digital Service to make sure that we transform forensic science. Although I have said that the marketplace is operating in an acceptable way, there are still issues like turnaround times taking too long, around making sure that we have resilience within the marketplace—all the important things that colleagues have raised today—and taking opportunities to mitigate those risks in whatever the new transformation looks like. We need to be ambitious with that. It is a real opportunity to look forward to how we can transform forensic science for the future.

Baroness Northover: Ms Osborne, I am looking at the key point of independence, how the forensic scientists are looking at this and what they are commissioned to do, which is partly at the heart of this. What would be your comment?

Jo Osborne: I agree that we have got to be ambitious. We have an opportunity, now that we have a better view of the MI, in terms of that single voice; that gives us a good starting point. We have to look at make versus buy. We have to look at all options as part of the commercial assessment. We have to bear in mind value for the public purse and, obviously, the risks. We will explore all of that. I do not disagree with what you said; it must form part of the development of the next strategy, and we must be able to evidence that we have looked at all routes.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Ms Meir, do you want to add anything to what we have just heard from your colleagues?

Jayne Meir: I agree that police reform and, in particular, forensics reform are an opportunity for us to look at how the service is delivered and at the national, regional and local approaches. You are always going to need local services aligned to forces, but the services should be aligned to the requirements of accreditation and should, therefore, be both consistent across the country and quality-assured centrally; that can give an element of independence, albeit in alignment, to local forces.

One of the challenges we have in digital forensics is that not all digital forensics are delivered by forces through their forensic science departments. Some are governed through their crime structures. A step forward would be to ensure that these are seen as forensics disciplines that sit within a forensics portfolio. Forensics reform will, I think, enable us to mandate that and to encourage alignment with a national operating model; I know that the director of forensics reform has this as a key objective.

Q74 Baroness Young of Old Scone: Perhaps I missed it, but do we know what proportion of services are delivered by an accredited organisation? That includes in-house and contracted services.

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes. We measure that across the forensics portfolio. This is akin to Jayne’s point: some services, such as CCTV, sit outside the forensics portfolio, so it is quite a complicated structure, but adherence to the code is measured by the regulator. There are high levels of compliance in areas such as phone examination and hard disk examination but, in some areas, forces are still maturing their quality assurance processes, so there is less compliance. It was always going to be the case that it would take some time to move to a fully accredited forensic science system. The level of work—and I should also say the cost—is significant; I know that chiefs across the country are sharing that. That said, it is a laudable introduction of something that is important in order to make sure that the quality of forensic science is as good as it can be.

Compliance with the code across the different disciplines is something that we actively look at as part of the portfolio board. We have a quality sub-portfolio, which is led by another chief officer and works through that in much more detail.

Q75 Lord Burnett of Maldon: My questions concern digital forensics so they will be principally for Ms Meir, I suspect. The report that the committee produced seven years ago noted the huge burden of digital evidence that police forces were having to cope with, as well as the need for research and development and the deployment of digital forensics. There was a strategy in 2020, I think, which was designed to deliver a transformational shift in digital forensics by 2025—that is, by now. So the first part of my question is: do you think that that has been achieved?

Part of this is a concern around the time it takes to examine digital devices; Ms Meir has already spoken to us a little about that. The consequence of these devices taking a very long time—sometimes a year or more—to be examined is that the evidence does not get to the CPS. Charging decisions are substantially delayed and, in the meantime, the case in general is degrading. Defendants, who are largely on bail, are having their lives put on hold, and complainants are also suffering. What in particular is being done at the moment to reduce the time taken between seizing digital devices and getting the necessary information out of them to enable charging decisions to be made?

Jayne Meir: It is fair to say that significant work has been done to improve the ability of forces to manage both the ever-increasing number of digital devices that are seized in the criminal justice process and the volume of material on each one of those devices. However, I do not think that we have achieved the transformational shift that we anticipated, wanted and needed when we wrote the digital forensic strategy in 2020. This is not to say that there has not been innovation during that period, but there is still more to do to ensure that we get timely digital forensics evidence, as you described.

We have had a number of improvements. Around a third of forces are now using cloud hosting and cloud capability to improve the timeliness of their evidence retrieval and review. We also have a third of forces using automation technologies to review large swathes of digital material and triage information so that they can identify criminal material within a device much quicker. However, we still have a varying level of maturity across forces, because a number of forces have not, for a variety of reasons, been able to deploy those technologies to date. We now expect, with the establishment of the Home Office’s director of forensics, to have the ability to look at what is working well in policing. A third of police forces are using these technologies, but what is the barrier to delivery across the remaining forces? How can we support them with that?

You talked the amount of digital evidence that is awaiting review and the delays that occur. HMIC reviewed forces in 2022. I would say that, since then, the number of devices awaiting review has been about the same. On the one hand, that is showing some improvement, because the number of devices and the volume of those devices is ever increasing, but it is definitely not where we want to be in terms of improving the timeliness of both gathering evidence and submission into the evidence process.

A number of initiatives are under way. Some of them are about ensuring that the automation tools used in some forces are available on a framework; that should be in place in the spring, so that more forces can procure those tools more readily and more cost-effectively. We have a national performance framework, which is in its second year of development and is allowing forces to see what is working well in the construct of their digital forensics units. We are working with the Forensic Science Regulator to make sure that the end-to-end process is efficient because, as Dr Gibson said, some of the activities around accreditation can be laborious and slow; we are looking to create as many efficiencies in those processes as we can.

Also, the College of Policing has refreshed its digital investigation training to help identify opportunities to hone the digital investigation strategy for every crime investigation. One of the challenges we have is that officers will take every digital device at a scene, submit all of them to their digital forensics unit and ask for them all to be examined pretty much concurrently. What we really need to understand is: what evidence are you looking for, from what device and why? This can really narrow things down and help us use our finite digital forensics capability to identify the evidence that is necessary.

A number of improvements have been made, but we are a way off the sort of transformational shift that we need. I am confident that, with the Home Office director having been appointed, we have a real opportunity to see what is working and to design a future operating model that will see those backlogs reduced.

Lord Burnett of Maldon: Can I just pick you up on one tiny point? You mentioned that the search is for criminal material. Can we be reassured that the search is also for exculpatory material?

Jayne Meir: Absolutely, but what we are seeking to do in the first instance is make sure that, if we have seized devices from a family, for example, we are quick to identify devices that have material of interest, such as child sexual abuse material, and those that do not. The digital triage tools that we have will look at a device and say, “This is where the material is and this is where the material is not”, but it is all available to demonstrate, as you say, the exculpatory material as well as the criminal material that we are looking for.

Q76 The Chair: I want to follow up on Lord Burnett’s question. You referred to the 2022 report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, which talked about the difficulty for victims. It said: “Too often, victims are being let down by a postcode lottery: their experience depends too heavily on the force area they live in. The time period for forces to start examining devices varies widely. Better performing forces start within weeks, whereas others start within 18 months. This gulf in performance cannot continue”. That was written in 2022. Do you feel that the postcode lottery problem has now largely been solved?

Jayne Meir: I would not say that it has been solved, but I would say that we have a better understanding—through the national performance framework—and that forces are looking to reduce the gap between the highest-performing and lowest-performing forces.

We know that investment in digital forensics is difficult because of the size and scale of forces, as well as the various funding positions in which they find themselves. Some forces have been able to invest in cloud hosting, cloud storage and expensive automation tools; others have not been able to do so as quickly. That is where we are working with both BlueLight Commercial, to try to bring down the costs of some of the software tools, and the director of forensics reform, to identify an opportunity where forces can be on the same playing field in terms of being able to deliver a service to victims.

The Chair: Is it still the case that, in some parts of the country, they have to wait 18 months before the examining of devices actually starts?

Jayne Meir: As I said earlier on the volume of cases, all cases will be triaged and understood in terms of their value to the investigation. If a case is a priority case, all forces will be able to respond to it. There may be some examples where computers are waiting a number of months, including more than 12 months, but that is not necessarily an average figure. These would be lower-priority cases, or the computer device may not be seen as a priority in an investigation because, for example, there are 30 phones; you may do the first 10 then move through and do the next 10, with the last 10 being done prior to any final charging decisions. It is fair to say that, in some forces, we are waiting a number of months. That length of time is unacceptable in terms of our future expectations.

Q77 Lord Borwick: There is an increasing risk of fake digital evidence. One of the great skills of policemen is having a gut feeling as to whether a witness or criminal is telling the truth. How are you going to do this with digital AI systems, which have been known to invent ideas in the past?

Jayne Meir: This is one of the significant emerging risks to digital forensic processes: to identify fake digital evidence. We see that in both video evidence and audio evidence.

There is an absolute recognition between policing, the Home Office and other partners that our ability to identify deepfakes in any digital material is at a critical point, but all of the AI risks to the criminal justice system are reviewed. Currently, a task and finish group led by the Home Office is looking into research on deepfake detection. There are also processes in place to start looking at risk monitoring and to understand, from the point of view of forces and the Crown Prosecution Service, where we have issues around deepfakes being in the evidence chain. We are also looking at what kinds of crime will be at the highest risk from AI, and a number of pieces of work are going on with academia to identify deepfakes in digital material; that work is continuing.

We have both synthetically generated material and falsified digital evidence. Seeing the differences between those and ensuring that our digital forensics experts have the tools to identify them will be essential in future, but it is not just about video; audio is also particularly challenging.

Lord Borwick: It must be a common problem around the world— particularly in America, where AI is even stronger than it is over here. Do the Americans have any better ways of detecting this than we do?

Jayne Meir: We are certainly working with Interpol, and we are aware of the work that is going on across the world to try to combat this emerging threat. It will absolutely be an international joint effort to keep pace with the types of technology that you are describing.

Lord Borwick: It sounds like a nearly impossible task.

Jayne Meir: I hope not.

Lord Borwick: Are you confident that we will succeed?

Jayne Meir: We have to be ripe for the challenge. Fortunately, we have across the country—and internationally, obviously—some good seats of academic research that are looking to keep pace and respond, but it is a challenge. It is about making sure that there is critical thinking and a review of our evidence, not just taking what we see at face value. That is where the forensics aspect of our work is so critical, in order to make sure that this is clear evidence and not fake material.

The Chair: We are going to have an opportunity to hear more about digital forensics research in our next session.

Lord Borwick: In detail?

The Chair: Yes. We are now going to ask some questions about evidence storage.

Q78 Lord Berkeley: As I understand it, police forces are now put in charge of storing physical evidence, but we have often heard that the process is underfunded and inconsistent; this is mainly due to the large volumes involved. The NPCC has produced guidance on how evidence should be collected from crime scenes, stored and retained, but we have also heard that the guidance is inconsistently followed. This may link to the previous question asked by Lord Burnett, but how can you ensure that this guidance on the storage of evidence is followed and, if it is not, do something about it?

The Chair: Perhaps Dr Gibson would like to start.

Dr Paul Gibson: I am happy to start. Exhibits are stored in part by forces, as you say. There are also physical forensic exhibits and digital forensic exhibits, which are stored with suppliers for the duration of them being there. We also have something called the FAL, which is our archive; considerable numbers of forensic exhibits are stored there as well.

The FCN has certainly been involved, through the standardisation and efficiency workstream, in making sure that there are consistent protocols on how forensic evidence is stored. Any risk is monitored again through my NPCC forensic portfolio board where I have the sub-leads from quality marketplace, digital forensics, fingerprints and other modalities that will feed in and raise any issues. Each force is responsible for its own forensic delivery in terms of the storage of what is in force. That is a matter for them, albeit, as I have mentioned, that there are now standard policies, asking forces to adhere to a consistent approach. When it involves statutory requirements, the continuity evidence and the chain of evidence for court and criminal justice processes, that is important as well. Obviously, we are talking about physical forensic exhibits but also digital forensic exhibits. Jayne mentioned earlier how you store considerable levels of digital material. This ranges from the early days of cupboards full of hard drives, some of which you are required to keep for 100 years. But we are now moving into cloud technology where storage is via the cloud. There is obviously cost to retrieving that stored material when it is required.

I should go back to an earlier point around the digital side of the business, in that different forces are in different places. There is a scale of advancement around use of cloud, other digital forensic tools and technologies. That, to some degree, is related to how well a force is resourced, although not entirely. I go back to the opportunity of transformation in the fact that we need to be able to look at the forces across England and Wales, consider this real divergent use of different technologies and how we start to knit that together into a cohesive national approach, where it is required. I do not underestimate the complexity of that but it is equally a significant opportunity whereby we can start to reduce the postcode lottery that has been described, both against the examination and delivery of justice to victims, and the archiving and storage of forensics exhibits on this particular question. I hope that helps.

Lord Berkeley: It sounds to me to be a recipe for chaos.

The Chair: Ms Meir, do you want to add anything on the digital side of storage that we have heard about from Dr Gibson?

Jayne Meir: I would completely agree at the moment. Digital material has previously been stored on hard drives and/or servers within police forces. As the amount of digital material continues to grow, there has to be a solution that is more flexible and able to reduce the burden on forces to maintain complex service systems within their own forces. What we know, though, about cloud storage, is that it can be costly to retrieve the evidence, as Dr Gibson mentioned. We need to make sure that whatever solution we design for policing, it is cost effective, secure and ensures that there is a consistent approach across the country, which the cloud now gives us. We did not have an obvious national solution five or six years ago, whereas now we are moving into a scenario whereby forces are proving the concept and we have a better model to prove what is effective, and we work with the director for forensics reform to design and implement that across the country.

The Chair: As you can see, we have many questions for you and time is running out. I am going to ask the members of the committee to be as brief as they can be in their questions. Perhaps you could be brief as well.

Q79 Lord Burnett of Maldon: I have a short question that could admit of a rather long answer. It is simply that the quality of forensic evidence generally depends upon the quality of investigation at a crime scene. My interest is in what training those who are crime scene investigators get now. Chair, I do not know whether it would be better to ask for a one or two-sentence answer from Dr Gibson in particular, and then perhaps invite him or whoever is responsible to put in a short note afterwards; otherwise we may not get to our next witnesses.

The Chair: That is an excellent suggestion.

Dr Paul Gibson: The very short answer is that our CSIs are accredited or certainly working towards accreditation through ISO standards—international standards. That is really important in making sure that the recovery from scenes is consistent and has integrity. We are also linked to the wider investigative realm as well, because, when we get a result, that then links into the quality of investigation of the wider kind of case to make sure that we get to a good solution for victims, and gain justice for them, of course.

Viscount Stansgate: I have a slightly longer question but I should rather appreciate a shorter answer, if that is all right with you. Given that many cases are collapsing due to missing, lost or damaged evidence, is it time to take the burden away from the police altogether through reopening a national forensic archive? What is needed to ensure a proper archiving of evidence? Given what we have heard about the need to get accredited and follow regulations set out by the Forensic Science Regulator, is it something that you recognise? More interesting would be to tackle this question of whether it should be taken away from the police altogether and put separately into this whole question of storage and archives, which is a big and growing problem.

The Chair: Dr Gibson, would you like to start on that?

Dr Paul Gibson: I cannot give you the precise figures around the number of cases that are collapsing due to missing or lost evidence. I possibly should add to that delayed evidence. That may well be an issue and is something that we actively monitor through the portfolio. But the forensic archive is open, operating and linked into the Home Office. We have worked closely with it, and it holds a great deal of material already on behalf of forces.

Lord Berkeley: Could the witness answer the question just posed about whether it should be kept separate?

The Chair: Well, the question of whether it should be taken from outside the police and dealt with completely separately.

Dr Paul Gibson: Obviously, with regard to the end-to-end process that we have discussed, we have to have some element of exhibits sitting within the police because that is where they are collected from, and where the initial submissions are made, depending on which route they then take through the forensic science system. In terms of separation, there is the possibility that the forensic archive could be extended to be much bigger. It is a question of where the status of the investigation is, because it could be collection point, analysis point, investigation point, or archive after case point. You would have to look at those different phases to work out where the best benefit would be in terms of separation.

The Chair: Is there any new material going into the forensic archive?

Dr Paul Gibson: Yes, as far as I am aware. Obviously, historic evidence is there from the old Forensic Science Service but there is still the capacity to store forensic samples within the archive.

The Chair: The new material is going into the forensic archive?

Dr Paul Gibson: As far as I am aware. I cannot give you a volume though but I could make some investigations, if that would be helpful.

The Chair: The final point was Viscount Stansgate’s question about accreditation regulation.

Dr Paul Gibson: In terms of accreditation, hopefully we have covered that issue for colleagues sufficiently, but accreditation applies not only to policing elements of forensic science but providers as well. We have covered the point that it is very comprehensive in terms of what you need to do. When you are inspected, you can sometimes get hundreds of actions to follow up to make sure that you are complying with the codes. We are working with the regulator to make that that is as proportionate as possible but it is important to make sure that the integrity of the evidence is where it needs to be.

The Chair: We are reaching almost the end.

Q80 Baroness Neuberger: Very quickly, because we are running late, can each of you give me an example of one of the things that, if you were in the position of writing the report we are going to be writing, you would recommend to the Government to improve forensics within England and Wales?

The Chair: What are your top priorities?

Baroness Neuberger: Top priorities—one each.

Dr Paul Gibson: Investment so that we can start to progress national systems that will eventually lead to invest to save—so it will save over the long term but it needs up-front investment to kick it off.

Jayne Meir: Using the opportunity of the director for forensics reform to standardise the national operating model for digital forensics.

Jo Osborne: Continuation of the national approach and development of a commercial strategy across both physical and digital.

The Chair: Thank you very much, all three of you. You have answered many questions from us and we are grateful. It has been extremely informative. We are now going to pause for a couple of minutes to bring in the next panel.