Mr. John Preece (Hansard, 26 January 1984)

§ Mr. Brittan

I have carefully studied the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, which is mainly about Home Office action under a different Administration. The report raises very serious issues about the standard and practice of the Home Office forensic science service and the handling in the Home Office of cases where there might have been a miscarriage of justice. On the basis of the findings of the report I have taken the following action.

I have satisfied myself that action has now been taken to ensure that members of the forensic science service maintain the highest scientific standards in the evidence they put to the courts. The service has strengthened its quality assurance system under which the work of all individual scientists is checked before it is used as evidence, the scientific content of the work done in the laboratories is monitored, and there are centrally organised tests of quality. The present controller, who was personally involved in the investigation of the cases dealt with by Dr. Clift, the forensic scientist in the Preece case, has reinforced to staff the lessons to be learned. She has emphasised the need to pay special attention to the quality, 626W accuracy and comprehensibility of forensic evidence in court cases. She has ensured that case records are preserved and stored properly. I have satisfied myself that the criminal department of the Home Office has learned the lessons to be drawn from this matter, which is fortunately exceptional, and that the department is well seized of the need to make a full and proper response in all cases where there are grounds for believing that there might have been a wrongful conviction.

I have completed the review, announced by my predecessor in September 1981, of criminal cases in which Dr. Clift was involved. I have decided to refer to the Court of Appeal under section 17(1)(a) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 16 cases where Dr. Clift gave evidence at the trial and where, if the evidence was erroneous or false — and I make no assumption on this point — the conviction could reasonably be regarded as open to question. These individual cases might not in themselves have warranted reference to the Court of Appeal; Dr. Clift's evidence was not by any means the only evidence against all the accused persons. Nevertheless, in the circumstances I have thought it right to take this action. It will, of course, be for the Court of Appeal to decide whether to uphold or quash the conviction in each case.

Following is a more detailed summary of the conduct of the review. All the laboratory records now in existence relating to instances in which Dr. Clift examined specimens have been scruitinised, in order to obtain the basic register of cases for the review. Laboratory records have proved to be available back to 1967, with a gap between January 1970 and April 1971; some forensic service case files were also found for 1965 and 1966; and a handful of other cases in which Dr. Clift had been involed, dating back to 1957, were discovered from other Home Office records. These records yielded a total of approximately 1,500 instances in which Dr. Clift examined material. Not all of these, however, were cases in which criminal proceedings were instituted. 627W In 351 of the cases, when the police were asked to provide details which would make it possible to ascertain whether an accused person was brought to trial, etc., it was found that the police files had been destroyed in accordance with routine. In these cases there was no information about whether court proceedings had taken place, and so there could be no review. There was a further large block—336—of cases in which, although Dr. Clift has examined material, it was established that no proceedings had been taken. There were 115 cases in which proceedings took place but in which no evidence from Dr. Clift was, in the event, offered or in which the defendant was acquitted. It was decided not to seek to investigate the 534 cases in which Dr. Clift had given evidence but the accused person pleaded guilty. The 129 cases which have been examined in detail are therefore those in which records are available, Dr. Clift is known to have given evidence, the accused pleaded not guilty to the offence of which he was charged, and there was a conviction. All available material has been studied, including material bearing both on the work done by Dr. Clift and on the court proceedings. There are six cases in this category—mostly cases which were heard by magistrates — in which the material now available for study is so scanty as to make is impossible for any conclusion to be drawn. In a large number of other cases studied in detail, the issue at the trial was not whether the accused committed a particular act but what offence, if any, his behaviour constituted. For example, there are cases in which the accused was charged with murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. These cases have come within the ambit of the review, but the possibility that the outcome of the trial will have been altered by forensic science evidence is necessarily remote. There are also cases in which the accused admitted that there had been sexual intercourse (the question to which the evidence of a biologist such as Dr. Clift would be particularly directed) but denied rape. In the remaining cases I have considered in each case the importance of Dr. (lift's evidence and whether if it was unsound the conviction might reasonably be regarded as open to question. In this consideration I have sought to give the benefit of any doubt to the convicted person, and it is on that basis that I have decided to refer the 16 cases to the Court of Appeal for independent and authoritative determination.