STORY: "Privatisation is a catastrophe, warns godfather of forensics," by reporter Paul Peachey, published in the Independent on April 2, 2012; Sub-heading: "Abolition of Forensic Science Service has led to miscarriages of justice, says DNA pioneer.
GIST: "In a damning indictment of the new system of forensic testing, Professor Peter Gill said the "wheels were already falling off" following the switch to private providers and police labs from the loss-making Forensic Science Service (FSS), which closed its doors for the last time at the weekend. He has called for thousands of criminal cases to be reviewed following high-profile blunders by the country's biggest private testing centre, LGC. The mistakes have also led to calls for a public inquiry. The FSS, which carried out 60 per cent of forensic work in Britain when the Government announced its closure in December 2010, finally shut down at the weekend with only its archives retained for historic reviews. The Government blamed monthly £2m losses but its closure leaves Britain as the only major country without a national forensics service. Professor Gill, who co-wrote the first scientific paper on uses of DNA for forensic science and led the work which set up the national database, quit the FSS in 2008 in protest at the agency's increasing commercialisation.
Professor Gill and other critics claim the changes over the past decade led to:
* the loss of niche technical skills including fibre analysis;
* forensic material from the same crime split between different providers;
* the end of expensive, ground-breaking research that contributed to some remarkable breakthroughs;
* the outsourcing of cases because private companies cannot cope with the surge in cases.
The LGC errors included the contamination between two samples in a lab. In one rape case it led to a false finding linking an innocent man to the crime scene. It was revealed last week the company also accidentally created a non-existent suspect during the inquiry into Gareth Williams, the MI6 worker whose body was found inside a bag at his London flat – leading police up a blind alley for more than a year. The forensic science regulator said it had checked 26,000 samples after the rape-case error and said it found no other problems. But Professor Gill expressed doubt over the inquiry's findings. "The only way forward is for the courts individually to reconsider the affected cases via the appeal procedure... otherwise it seems to me that there is a significant possibility of miscarriage of justice in the cases that comprise the affected batch of samples," he said."
THE ENTIRE STORY CAN BE FOUND AT:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/privatisation-is-a-catastrophe-warns-godfather-of-forensics-7606789.html 
