Old DNA tech 'to hit crime-solving'

Cross-border co-operation on terrorism and crime will be compromised unless the UK updates the technology it uses for DNA profiling, experts have warned.

The country where the technique was developed now lags behind most European countries, which use newer systems to process and classify crime samples.

But plans to destroy millions of stored DNA samples could increase police workloads when the UK upgrades.

A select committee is hearing evidence on the state of UK forensic science.

The EU has recommended that member states adopt a standard set of 12 genetic markers - or loci - called the European Standard Set (ESS).

The large number of profiles held in different European databases that could potentially be compared necessitated standardisation, and an increase in the number of markers used to match them.

One purpose of the ESS was to reduce the potential for chance, or adventitious, matches between unrelated individuals. If investigators are comparing profiles generated using different sets of markers, there might not be enough of them in common to exclude such adventitious matches.

The timeline for implementation has now passed. Information obtained by the BBC shows that of 15 European countries for which data is available, the UK is one of four that has not upgraded to the recommended marker set.

Experts also say that the "chemistry" that underlies DNA testing kits used by UK forensic science labs is now more than a decade old and that newer, more sensitive systems can obtain results from even low quality samples - improving success rates. Some argue that such information can potentially make or break a case.