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Forensic Science

: I accept that point and thank my hon. Friend for it. We are not saying that such contamination is deliberate; accidental contamination can take place. I remember that it was necessary to carry out some of these techniques in a microbiology-free atmosphere because one's own DNA could get into the sample and interfere with it without one knowing. A person could simply touch something and a bit of DNA could move out of their body into the sample, messing the whole thing up. We are talking about an example of multidisciplinary research at its best. Funnily enough, crime has broken the back of the insularity we see in universities. I am not too worried about the million courses that there are in universities because I do not mind if law students are taught a bit of biology. I do not mind if chemists, biologists and law students go through similar courses in different departments. Breaking down the departmental insularity—the ghettoism—in universities is an extremely important issue. Reading between the lines of the Chancellor's recent Budget, he recognised that it is important to do that by making research councils merge and amalgamate their programmes' work. We need to forget about the old words we were brought up with and remember that science has moved on. The poor judicial system will have to make judgments on the basis of all the complex interactions that are going on, with a widening repertoire of evidence coming in. I rue the day when court cases consist of scientists slugging it out. I have been at too many academic conferences where scientists love slugging it out—no two people will ever agree with each other. There must be some parameters to determine how much evidence is needed, how much has been repeated and how many laboratories we have to interact with in order to get the evidence. There is a lot to be done in that area. We have a new policing system. We have intelligence-led policing, forensic awareness training programmes, crime scene examiners and all the new legislation, including the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Identity Cards Bill and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. There is also the compensatory scheme that I mentioned, all of which are part and parcel of the application of forensic science in order to get a better understanding of what goes on in particular circumstances. We need a collective economic assessment of the value of some of these technologies and what we get out of them. There is to be a new level 2 of the national DNA database, which we have heard about. There are going to be new fingerprint identification systems. I always prefer footprints and the patterns on those to fingerprints, but their use has not been extended to the extent it has in the New Zealand system, for example. Lots of new technologies are coming through. There will be more higher education courses and forensic science will move from DNA technology to RNA technology and protein technology. Then we will really get into it.