“HANDING over forensic science responsibilities to an untested privatised system will have serious repercussions for Britain’s next major case and is not in the best interest of its citizens.”

The statement on from Professor Allyson MacVean was unequivocal. Phasing out the crime-busting Forensic Science Service (FSS) risked putting the country’s criminal justice in jeopardy.

She has not been the only academic or scientist to criticise the Government’s decision to close the FSS, an organisation that put Britain at the forefront of scientific sleuthing.

When Crime prevention minister James Brokenshire announced last December that it was to wind up the FSS, its case was pure economics, the service was losing £2million a month and its cash was due to run out within weeks.

Union leaders disputed the losses, and said even it were accurate they did not view it as a ‘loss’ but a cost to the criminal justice system of ensuring fairness and impartiality.

To understand the position the FSS finds itself, one must look back into its recent history.

The organisation was, for years, the primary provider of forensic analysis of evidence to police.

In 2005 the FSS was turned into a Government Company as part of a move to encourage competition in the market which had a small number of private providers.

Critics now argue that the ‘market’ did not develop as first thought.

In the past year, it is estimated that the forensics market dropped from £170million to £110million as police forces developed their own in-house expertise and reduced the number of submissions.

But what are the dangers to crimefighting in the UK if the FSS disappears?

There are the obvious job losses, but the Prospect union, which represents 1,000 members in the FSS, argues the dangers are more fundamental.

The FSS has been responsible for every leap forward made in DNA crimefighting technology since Sir Alec Jeffreys discovered genetic fingerprinting in 1984. The FSS pioneered the development and implementation of DNA profiling technologies and developed ways to extract evidence from smaller, older or degraded material, paving the way for the world’s first DNA Database in April 1995.

There are fears that while the private sector will carry out routine analysis that can be charged for, it cannot be relied upon to continue ground-breaking research that would eat into profits.

In its submission to the Science and Technology Select committee, Prospect argued: “If we allow regulation and research to be carried out by business only, there can be no faith in the results due to bias and no research without a guaranteed commercial output.”

Prof Jeffreys, in a letter to New Scientist magazine, added: “Providing access to the best forensic expertise will always be a drain on the public purse.

“Government comments that the FSS is losing money reveal an unimaginative bean-counting mentality and an inability to understand how forensic science progresses.”

Then there are questions of impartiality, with critics expressing it could be eroded because of competing pressures of profit and value for money.

In the US capital Washington DC, there is a plan to take control of the city’s forensics labs away from police and create an independent department – the reverse of what is happening in the UK – with the aim of creating higher standards, fewer errors and more reliable findings.

Politicians argue it is more credible to have police collect evidence and have independent qualified scientists analyse it and testify.

Criminologist Prof David Wilson, from Birmingham City University, said: “It is always a concern when something that isn’t broken is supposed being fixed.

“The FSS does a fundamental job. I know of very few cases in which a prisoner or offender is claiming a miscarriage of justice on forensic evidence.

“That is opposed to some criminal justice jurisdictions in the US where there are problems of junk forensic science.

“We don’t have these kinds of problems in this country.”

Experts have also expressed fears of fragmentation if different forensic providers analyse individual pieces of evidence without ever seeing the full picture.