Action is needed to prevent miscarriages of justice caused by flawed treatment of expert evidence, a committee of MPs has concluded.

A report from the Commons science and technology committee said that while such cases may be few in number, systems still need to be put in place to deal with the eventuality.

The MPs said they were "very concerned at the lack of safeguards" for handling problems with expert evidence.

They recommended that a scientific review committee should be set up within the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

And a forum for science and the law should allow ongoing scrutiny of expert evidence and improve communication between the scientific and legal communities.

The committee said it was "entirely unsatisfactory" that there is no agreed method for validating scientific evidence before it is presented in court.

And the MPs also concluded that it is complacent to believe that the adversarial system provides sufficient safeguards in cases that rely on scientific evidence.

"The courts need to get their act together. When scientists have to deal with legal issues, they get help from lawyers, but lawyers and judges seem to be happy to handle scientific evidence themselves," said committee chairman Dr Ian Gibson.

"There need to be much clearer lines of communication between the legal and scientific professions and scientists must be given a proper chance to feed their opinions into our court system.

"We have already seen the tragic consequences that can arise when expert evidence is not dealt with properly.

"Action needs to be taken now to make sure that miscarriages of justice like that can't happen again."