Steve Woods

More details have now emerged about the postponement of a court hearing at Nottingham Crown Court on Friday for Anxiang Du, a Chinese businessman accused of stabbing a family of four to death in Northampton, due to the absence of a Mandarin interpreter, which was described at the time as “an absolute disgrace” by the judge, Mr Justice Julian Flaux (posts passim).

The judge has requested the attendance of an interpreter and on this particular point yesterday’s Express informed its readers as follows:

The clerk at Nottingham Crown Court said he had been told it was “not worthwhile” for an interpreter to turn up.

However, this version of events is disputed by Capita, as can be seen from the extract below from a report in Friday’s Northampton Chronicle and Echo:

A Capita spokesman said: “After the original interpreter booked to attend the hearing was unable to attend, Capita worked to secure a replacement.

“The replacement interpreter could not attend until 2.30pm and we communicated this, in good time, to the court.

“Capita at no time refused to arrange an interpreter to attend Nottingham Crown Court on cost or any other grounds.”

From the above quotation from the anonymous Capita spokesman, it is quite apparent that Capita is calling into question the honesty and integrity of the Nottingham Crown Court clerk or to put it into plainer English alleging the clerk is lying.

In my experience, clerks to the court are persons of the highest probity, whose duties according to Wikipedia include the following:

The Court Clerk is a critical safeguard for integrity of the courts. In most courts, only the clerk, but not a judge, is the keeper of the Seal of the Court. The clerk is also required to attest/authenticate judicial records, to render them such that command “full faith and credit”.

Who do you think is more likely to be lying: a crown court official with no axe to grind or a failing contractor incapable of meeting performance targets (posts passim) and trying to save face?

The evidence that Capita is incapable of providing an adequate interpreting service for courts and tribunals in England and Wales continues to pile up.

The latest failure comes from Nottingham where a court hearing for Anxiang Du, a Chinese businessman accused of stabbing a family of four to death in Northampton, was adjourned today because no Mandarin intrepreter was sent to the proceedings, according to the Northampton Chronicle.

At the hearing at Nottingham Crown Court, Mr Justice Julian Flaux explained that he had asked for an interpreter to be booked. However, he said Capita had indicated that it was not worth sending an interpreter as they “would not make enough money” from the hearing.

Mr Justice Flaux is reported to have said: “To say that the presiding judge of the court is annoyed about this is an understatement.” In addition, he ordered Capita to provide a written explanation giving their account of their failure to supply an interpreter for the proceedings.

The plea and case management hearing has now been set provisionally for 19th July, with the trial due to begin on 12th November.

A Mandarin interpreter did eventually arrive at the court at about 2.30pm, but the hearing had already been adjourned by then.

The letter below, originally posted on RPSI Linguist Lounge, has been sent to Helen Grant MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, in response to the recent announcement of an increase in the remuneration for linguists employed under the MoJ’s contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim), an increase which will be borne by the taxpayer, not the contractor.

Dear Helen Grant,

I would like to congratulate you on increasing ‘the take-home pay of interpreters’. But this isn’t going to really change anything at all for interpreters in providing a better service as this increase is VERY minimal, as this still doesn’t fully cover the travel expenses of getting to a job location. There are very few of us who can afford to work full-time as a public service interpreter with the possibility of only earning £13.32 in a day (before tax). The calculations show that Capita does not even guarantee a rate equal to the minimum wage and at best the gross hourly rate for half a day at court has been reduced by 57.85% (even at the previous enhanced mileage rate of 40 [pence] per mile).

So what NEEDS to happen is: Tier 1 Police interpreting jobs need to be paid a premium of about £30 per hour with FULL travel expenses covered, door to door travel mileage at a rate of £0.40 per mile and full travel time of £10 an hour, to ensure interpreters/translators accept the assignment and arrive at the immediate police job as soon as possible, as most Police jobs are emergencies and are needed very quickly, otherwise the ‘criminal’ will have to either stay in custody till a interpreter arrives (which could take days, with the low pay for interpreters) OR they can just be freed on bail back on to the streets, so they can re-offend and make the streets even less safe.

Also the mileage rate needs to become £0.40 per mile across the board; so Tier 1, 2 and 3 because as I said the current £0.20 rate is just horrendous, making it not even viable to even head out to go to a job assignment because the interpreters will still be making a loss at the end of the day!

If you listen to what I am trying to say, you will find out that this will, in essence, bring the full qualified interpreters back to the court room and make justice possible!

How can you do this to interpreters which have trained for many years to get to where they’re to then be paid a minimum wage?! No wonder they’ve boycotted Capita! They deserve to be paid a way more than what is currently being paid. So when the rates eventually rise, then we shall see very positive work from Interpreters and Translators. But hopefully you will fix this issue because at the end of the day, this just isn’t fair on the interpreters, translators, solicitors, barristers and judges.

I hope to see a reply from you.

Kind Regards