Lords Grand Committee
11 November 2026
Contents updated at 14:57
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Lords Grand Committee Actual start House of Lords
Follow its sittings15:27 - 15:44
Speaker 2
My Lords, if there is a division in the chamber whilst we're sitting, this committee will adjourn as soon as the division bells are rung, and resume after 10 minutes. Motion for debate, report from the Science and Technology Committee, Lord Mair.
15:44 - 17:43
Speaker 1
My Lords, I'm delighted to introduce for debate, our Science and Technology Committee report entitled Rebuilding Forensic Science: Criminal Justice, an Urgent Need. At the outset, I welcome Lord Hanson of Fleet Flint, responding on behalf of the Home Office. I also wish to thank the committee members who participated in the report, including those who have since left the committee.
I thank Lord Burnett of Maldon, who was co-opted onto the Committee, as well as Baroness Black for her informative briefings to the Committee and support of the inquiry. I also wish to thank the excellent Committee staff who assisted in preparing this report: the clerks, John Turner and Daisy Robins, the policy analyst, Thomas Hornigold, the Committee operations officer, Sid Gurung. The inquiry started in November 2025, publishing our report in February 2026, and the Government responded in April 2026. The inquiry heard from a range of witnesses, including forensic scientists, companies, the regulator, defence barristers, and witnesses from the Home Office and Ministry of Justice.
Crucially, the inquiry was in part a follow-up to the inquiry that the committee undertook in 2018-2019 in which I also took part. So, in my speech today, I will first set out the issues our inquiry found with the forensic science system, which many others have also identified. I will then discuss the government's response and its proposed policing reforms, which involve setting up a national policing service with forensics as part of its remit, but which risk kicking a lot of these urgent issues into the long grass. I will conclude with questions for the minister. Forensic science is unquestionably a critical pillar of the criminal justice system.
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