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Forensic Science Service

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Although I have tried to follow what his Select Committee does, I do not necessarily manage to follow every nuance. How assessment is conducted is also an issue. In respect of the research excellence framework, there is a table in the Silverman review detailing the units of assessment that might apply to forensic science, an approach that creates the risk of falling between many cracks. I do not intend to dwell on the REF, however. What are the long-term prospects for research and development? When I visited the LGC the staff proudly showed me a field kit they were working on that is intended to enable DNA testing to be done out in the field and therefore speed up getting results. That would be very welcome. They said they had spent about £3 million on developing the kit thus far—it is not finished yet. The LGC is able to do that because it is a large organisation. I cannot imagine a police force being able to invest so much money in such a detailed and specific project. Research and development is not an area in which we can have 10 organisations each doing a tenth of the work. The LGC is clearly able to do that work, so it does not require the help of the FSS. I hope the Government will ensure that we have research and development with a long-term perspective. In areas such as low copy number analysis, there are risks of over-interpretation of data. There must be sufficient coherence in our research and development programme to address such issues. I do not want to rehearse in detail who did what when. We are where we are, and we must now make sure we go forward in the right direction.