Justice news updates

In the wake of the Bangladeshi disasters, Sarah Page blogs about the value of UK safety regulation.

Less forensic evidence is being analysed, with potential implications for the quality of information available to inform criminal cases, expert witnesses have told MPs.

The civil service desperately needs a thorough skills audit if is to provide its specialists with enough resources to keep them, Prospect Deputy General Secretary Dai Hudd argues in a blog on the Guardian Professional website today.

Prospect has written to Home Secretary Theresa May strongly protesting at the British government's refusal to grant entry visas to two Kenyan trade unionists invited to attend the union's national conference in Bournemouth last week.

Britain’s civil service has lost its professional edge and needs urgent reform, Prospect said today (Wednesday) in a hard-hitting report, Government That Can – needs people who know how.

Kamal Abbas, the General Coordinator of the Egyptian Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS) has been sentenced, in absentia, to six months imprisonment for comments he made at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) last year. This is a gross breach of his freedom of expression, and an attempt to silence one of Egypt's most respected labour rights activists.

Labour's Shadow Home Secretary has slammed the government’s handling of the closure of the Forensic Science Service and warned it will make it harder for the police to solve rape cases.

A poll of over 350 UK forensic scientists has revealed that more than three-quarters believe next month's closure of the UK's Forensic Science Service (FSS) will lead to an increase in miscarriages of justice.

The functions of the Forensic Science Service’s Wetherby Laboratory in West Yorkshire are to be taken over by private forensic provider LGC with the loss of at least 130 highly skilled jobs.

Prospect has backed a call by a key Commons committee for the prime minister to review the decision to close the Forensic Science Service. At prime minister's questions in October, Andrew Miller, chair of the science and technology committee, said a review was necessary as the financial arguments used to justify closure were flawed.

Prospect has had to defend the right of specialist staff working in the Metropolitan Police Service to take strike action.