I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on bringing forward such an important Bill at such an important time. There is so much pent-up demand in both Houses of Parliament for this Bill to be delivered, and I know that the Home Office is incredibly enthusiastic about it, so it is timely that we will get it done. Unfortunately, in the previous Parliament I tried and failed, and for me it is a lesson about instability in Parliament having an impact on people’s lives and about the ability to deliver key services. It is really important at this stage to get this Bill delivered.
As has been highlighted, there have been reports in both Houses, which I think indicates not only the level of support for the Bill, but the critical necessity of doing so at this stage. In 2011, 2013 and 2016, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee recommended that the regulator should receive statutory powers to enforce compliance with quality standards. In Sir Brian Leveson’s review of the efficiency of criminal proceedings—that was in 2015—he repeated the call for statutory powers. In 2019, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, in a very extensive and authoritative report, called for such powers. The body of evidence building up indicates a signal failure within the system which now needs to be put right.
It is worth bearing in mind that there is a little bit of history before the dates that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) highlighted, so I will touch on that briefly. In 2002, the Forensic Science Service stopped being a preferred supplier of forensic services to the police forces. In 2003, a Home Office review of the Forensic Science Service recommended that it become a Government-owned company, and in 2005 it became a Government-owned company in that sense. In 2008, the Forensic Science Regulator was established without the statutory provisions that are now so important. The Home Office also established the national forensics framework to allow police forces to purchase forensics from private suppliers and the FSS, using standard contracts with pre-agreed terms and conditions. Police forces therefore could choose not to purchase forensics through the framework but had to use the procedures for such services. Understandably, in 2010, with a whole series of concerns and problems, the coalition Government announced that they would shut down the FSS, citing in the decision its losses of £2 million a month. The need for reform was at that stage and is now abundantly clear; how the system is reformed is a different question.