Yesterday’s Law Gazette reports that senior judge Sir James Munby, who is the President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales, has described the arrangements for providing court interpreters under the contract between Capita and the Ministry of Justice as “unacceptable” after he was forced to abandon a final adoption hearing after Capita was repeatedly unable to provide interpreters for the Slovak-speaking parents.
Sir James ordered Capita to explain why neither of the 2 interpreters booked for the 7th May hearing had attended. He described the response to the points he raised in his judgement (PDF) from Capita’s relationship director Sonia Facchini, as disclosing a “concerning state of affairs”, with 3 points “demanding notice”.
In the first instance he noted: “The contractual arrangements between Capita and the interpreters it provides do not give Capita the ability to require that any particular interpreter accepts any particular assignment or even to honour any engagement which the interpreter has accepted.”
Secondly, he drew attention to the short notice courts were given of any cancellation of a booking by a interpreter (2 pm on the day before the hearing). This gives the court insufficient time to make alternative arrangements.
Thirdly, he noted the lack of suitably qualified interpreters. On the day in question, Capita needed 39 Slovak interpreters to cover the workload requested by the courts; Capita only had 29 suitably qualified Slovak interpreters on its books for court hearings that day, of whom a mere 13 were within a 100-mile radius of London’s Royal Courts of Justice.
Defending his adjournment, Sir James stated: “Anyone tempted to suggest that an adjournment was not necessary might care to consider what our reaction would be if an English parent before a foreign court in similar circumstances was not provided with an interpreter.”
Quite.
When approached for a response to the learned judge’s remarks, both Capita and the MoJ made their usual, meaningless soothing noises that are not worth transcribing, let alone reading.
In political terms, the responses by the MoJ to concerns about its contract with Capita are akin to the “Big Lie“. However, the lies told by its various spokespersons over the years are so preposterous, no-one with any sense is buying their propaganda.