Shabana Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Shabana Mahmood on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government has taken to improve forensic pathology services in England and Wales other than those based on the Hutton review of forensic pathology since the General Election in 2015.

Brandon Lewis

The Home Office Forensic Pathology Unit has worked alongside the forensic pathology profession, National Police Chief’s Council, Chief Coroner, the Royal College of Pathologists and other senior stakeholders towards continuous improvement of the service. Improvements include the delivery of a robust system of annual appraisal and revalidation, an annual audit of pathology reports and ongoing oversight of standards through monitoring individual pathologist’s workload and quality.

Together this package of improvements ensures that forensic pathologists’ work is now quality assured in order to protect the Criminal Justice System. The Home Office continues to support and fund trainee forensic pathologists to maintain long-term capability.

Furthermore, the Home Office Pathology Unit identified a shortage of sub-speciality pathologists who support forensic pathologists in complex cases. To resolve the capability gap a recruitment and training programme has been established that has resulted in greater resilience in paediatric, bone, eye and neuro-pathology support to the service.