It is important that we set the direction of travel. We need to take this incredibly important step today. This work ought to be seen in the context of the total annual police budget, which is £12.3 billion, and not the £400,000 annual cost of the regulator, but we may have to revisit this at a later point as technology advances and changes with time.
Money is a key aspect. I highlighted earlier, in justification to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, the budget and the way it has changed. In 2008, the forensic science budget was about £120 million; in 2018-19, it was £50 million to £55 million out of a police budget of £12.3 billion that year, so we can see the reduction. Part of that may be due to improved efficiencies, but there are significant concerns in the system that things are being squeezed.
There are particular concerns about the squeeze when it comes to more niche services. We all know about services such as DNA and fingerprinting, which—this is very crude phrasing—might be seen as “mass production” services, but what about more specialised techniques? Mycology, for example, is a technique used in estimating times of death or events by using known growth rates of fungi, in providing trace evidence and in locating corpses. It can also include looking for causes of death or illness by fungi poisoning, and fungi used in biological warfare. There are quite extraordinary specialisms in the system.
One of the concerns highlighted to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee was about lower commissioning rates of those more specialist services. An individual who contributed to the inquiry, David Hawksworth CBE, highlighted that about 10 years ago he might have had about five or six cases per year but that has really dipped to perhaps one or two, or even zero, cases per year. If he needs accreditation—if he needs to go on courses to be able to present that information in the court environment—that will be a significant cost to him. If he rarely uses his skills to make such contributions, it will be a great expense to him. There ought therefore to be recognition in the regulator’s approach that, for many things, we do want those standards—the 17025 standards, which are generic laboratory standards—but exceptions to that ought to be considered, perhaps on a case-by-case basis.