Campaign group Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) has condemned Justice Minister Helen Grant’s response to the Justice Committee’s scathing report published on 6 February as “glib” (posts passim).

Keith Moffitt, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, representing PI4J says: “If the Minister, as she has stated, wants to work ‘effectively and positively’ with the interpreting community to develop a system that meets the needs of the justice sector, then she must take the report’s findings seriously. This continued repetition of misleading and inaccurate figures is not helping and there is a real risk of the legal interpreter profession collapsing altogether”.

The report described the Ministry of Justice’s outsourcing of court language services as “nothing short of shambolic” and concluded that performance figures for the contract are likely to represent a “significant overestimate” and “clearly do not reflect the company’s fulfilment against 100% of the requirements of HMCTS and should be altered, retrospectively and in the future, to indicate this”.

In spite this, Justice Minister Helen Grant continues to insist that while there had been “significant” issues at the start of the contract last year, “swift and robust action” has led to “dramatic improvements”.

Commenting on the report she said: “The vast majority of interpreter bookings are now being completed and complaints have fallen considerably. The changes we have made have led to major savings for taxpayers, totalling £15 mn. in the first year and we continue to monitor the contract on a daily basis and demand continuing progress.”

PI4J has repeatedly rejected the misleading and unverified figures published by the Ministry and asserts that the Ministry of Justice has deliberately given the wrong picture about its contractor’s performance. Independent calculations estimate that the performance figure for the contract is nearer 50% rather than the Minister’s publicly stated figure of 95% and that fulfilment of the Framework Agreement, which has a total potential value of up to £42 mn. per year, is currently at just 20%.

Nick Rosenthal, Chair of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), who gave evidence at the Justice Committee hearing on 23 October added: “We have told the Minister that in order to continue the discussions with us about improving quality in court interpreting, there needs to be recognition that the quality issues are a result of the system which uses a single private contractor and that alternative models must be considered”.

PI4J is calling for the Minister to revert immediately to the previous National Agreement arrangement whereby qualified interpreters were sourced using the NRPSI. The value of the National Register was endorsed by the JSC report in its conclusions and recommendations, saying “there do not appear to have been any fundamental problems with the quality of services, where they were properly sourced i.e. through arrangements that were underpinned by the National Register of Public Service Interpreters.”

Incidences of interpreter “no-shows” and poor quality interpreting at courts and police stations across the UK are still being reported at an alarming rate. This week a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court collapsed on 7 February due to disputed interpreting by a Sylheti linguist, resulting in Judge Joana Korner CMG QC specifically instructing the Crown Prosecution Service not to “hire any interpreters in future who are not on the National Register”.

Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters (APCI), concludes: “The Framework Agreement and the contract with Capita do not work and never will. The Ministry of Justice was determined to push this through in the face of overwhelming evidence that it would reduce the quality of language services. This failed delivery model must be abandoned and replaced by arrangements that ensure justice can be delivered consistently through the use of properly qualified professional interpreters.”

PI4J is awaiting a reply from the Justice Minister to a letter sent on 22 January expressing their dissatisfaction with Helen Grant’s cavalier use of statistics.

Helen Grant’s glibness also finds expression in other forms: despite her constituency home being a mere 19 miles from the House of Commons in Westminster, she has the temerity to claim a second home allowance, as the BBC reported last November.

Campaign group Professional Interpreters for Justice has condemned Justice Minister Helen Grant’s glib response to the scathing report published by the Justice Select Committee (JSC) this week (posts passim).

The report, which described the Ministry of Justice’s outsourcing of court language services as “nothing short of shambolic”, concluded that performance figures for the contract are likely to represent a “significant overestimate” and “clearly do not reflect the company’s fulfilment against 100% of the requirements of HMCTS and should be altered, retrospectively and in the future, to indicate this”.

Despite this, Justice Minister Helen Grant continues to insist that while there had been “significant” issues at the start of the contract last year, “swift and robust action” has led to “dramatic improvements”.

Commenting on the report she said: “The vast majority of interpreter bookings are now being completed and complaints have fallen considerably. The changes we have made have led to major savings for taxpayers, totalling £15 mn. in the first year and we continue to monitor the contract on a daily basis and demand continuing progress.”

Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) has repeatedly rejected the misleading and unverified figures published by the Ministry and asserts that the MoJ has deliberately given the wrong picture about its contractor’s performance. Independent calculations estimate that the performance figure for the contract is nearer 50%* rather than the Minister’s publicly stated figure of 95% (16th January) and that fulfilment of the Framework Agreement, which has a total potential value of up to £42 mn. per annum, is currently at just 20%.

Keith Moffitt, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, representing PI4J says: If the Minister, as she has stated, wants to work “effectively and positively” with the interpreting community to develop a system that meets the needs of the justice sector, then she must take the report’s findings seriously. This continued repetition of misleading and inaccurate figures is not helping and there is a real risk of the legal interpreter profession collapsing altogether”.

Nick Rosenthal, Chair of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), who gave evidence at the JSC hearing (23 Oct) added: “We have told the Minister that in order to continue the discussions with us about improving quality in court interpreting, there needs to be recognition that the quality issues are a result of the system which uses a single private contractor and that alternative models must be considered”.

PI4J is calling for the Minister to revert immediately to the previous National Agreement arrangement under which qualified interpreters were sourced using the NRPSI. The value of the National Register was endorsed by the Justice Committee’s report in its conclusions and recommendations (no.4), which states: “there do not appear to have been any fundamental problems with the quality of services where they were properly sourced i.e. through arrangements that were underpinned by the National Register of Public Service Interpreters.”

Instances of interpreter “no shows” and poor quality interpreting at courts and police stations across the UK are still being reported at an alarming rate. Just this week a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court collapsed (7th February) due to disputed interpreting by a Sylheti (Bangladeshi) linguist, resulting in Judge Joana Korner CMG QC specifically instructing the Crown Prosecution Service not to “hire any interpreters in future who are not on the National Register”.

Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman, Association of Police and Court Interpreters (APCI), concludes: “The Framework Agreement and the contract with Capita do not work and never will. The Ministry of Justice was determined to push this through in the face of overwhelming evidence that it would reduce the quality of language services. This failed delivery model must be abandoned and replaced by arrangements that ensure justice can be delivered consistently through the use of properly qualified professional interpreters.”

Finally, PI4J is awaiting a reply from the Justice Minister to a letter sent on 22nd January criticising Helen Grant’s use of statistics.

The long-awaited report from the Justice Committee, a House of Commons select committee, has now been published. The committee’s inquiry found that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) pushed ahead with outsourcing court interpreter services despite warnings that the quality of court language services would be reduced.

Evidence presented to the committee strongly suggests that the MoJ did not have a sufficient understanding of the complexities of court interpreting work. Prior to the award of the court interpreting contract to Applied Language Solutions (ALS) the MoJ’s consultation revealed significant concern that quality standards could be reduced by the imposition of a tiered system to enable a wider pool of interpreters and by the introduction of lower pay levels. However, the MoJ pushed ahead with the contract and failed to anticipate or address the potential for problems with ALS’ capacity to deliver what it promised.

When Capita acquired ALS for £7.5m in December 2011 and began providing interpreting and translation services to HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) in January 2012, it faced immediate operational difficulties. ALS/Capita have been unable to recruit enough qualified and experienced interpreters, resulting in availability and quality reductions in court and tribunal interpreting services.

The situation has been exacerbated due to a widespread boycott of the new arrangements by professional interpreters. Capita/ALS clearly needed significantly more resources than it had to provide the service to the required standard. The company also paid lip service to the regulatory duties accepted under the framework agreement with the MoJ, but did not have the capacity to cope with complaints or to implement basic vetting procedures.

According to the committee, the most important priority is for the MoJ and Capita to prove that the framework agreement is capable of attracting, retaining and deploying an adequate number of qualified and competent interpreters to meet the requirements of the courts and tribunals.

The Committee has also condemned actions taken by MoJ which had hampered its inquiry. HMCTS issued an edict to its staff instructing them not to participate in the Committee’s online consultation, established to invite direct observations from front-line staff of the performance of ALS. The committee considers that the ministry’s actions may have constituted a contempt of the House, but has insufficient evidence of this from other sources to make a reliable judgement.

Commenting of the report the Chair of the Committee, Sir Alan Beith MP, said:

The Ministry of Justice’s handling of the outsourcing of court interpreting services has been nothing short of shambolic. It did not have an adequate understanding of the needs of courts; it failed to heed warnings from the professionals concerned and it did not put sufficient safeguards in place to prevent interruptions in the provision of quality interpreting services to courts.

The select committee’s report is available in both HTML (read online) and PDF versions.

This makes the justice committee the second parliamentary committee to condemn the way the MoJ handled the outsourcing of court interpreting after the Public Accounts Committee’s Chair, Margaret Hodge MP, described the process as “an object lesson in how not to contract out a public service” on the publication of her committee’s report (posts passim).

At the weekend I wrote about Baroness Coussins‘ oral question in the House of Lords on the fiasco otherwise known as Capita’s contract with the Ministry of Justice for the provision of court interpreting services (posts passim).

Hansard has now published the answer from government minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, as well as Baroness Coussins’ supplementary question and a follow-up question from Labour Peer Lord Harrison:

Baroness Coussins: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Lords, performance under the language services contract with Capita is measured by agreed indicators, including the success rate for bookings. I am pleased to report that this improved from 66.5% to 95.3% between February and August 2012. Complaints during this period also fell significantly. The National Audit Office recommended that the Ministry of Justice obtained independent advice on quality standards under the contract and I am pleased to report that the Minister has already met umbrella interpreter organisations in this respect.

Baroness Coussins: My Lords, I am delighted that constructive talks are finally taking place with the professional bodies following the damning reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. However, is the noble Lord aware that the success figure of 95% that he gives excludes the large number of short-notice requests from the courts, which would bring the fulfilment rate down to more like 56%? In any case, that figure tells us nothing about the competence of the interpreters who do turn up. Will the Government now agree to conduct a thorough, independent inspection of the service so that the quality of service can be improved and the number of properly qualified interpreters who are willing to work for Capita can be significantly increased?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: The noble Baroness makes a valid point about short-notice bookings. In that respect, it is true that bookings for hearings with less than 24 hours’ notice were temporarily descoped from the contract in mid-February and the courts and tribunals reverted to previous arrangements. However, I can report to the House that a pilot to return these bookings has begun in selected criminal courts across England and Wales and will be phased back across regions and jurisdictions when the project board has continued confidence in performance.

Turning to the competence and qualifications of interpreters, the new contract allows for an increased range of acceptable qualifications and experience. Under the contract, all foreign language interpreters must show evidence that they have the required qualifications before they can undertake assignments. We have a tiering facility and all courts are encouraged to ensure that interpreters are qualified to tier 1 or tier 2 for all bookings unless otherwise agreed with the court or tribunal.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, there was also a requirement by the National Audit Office to ensure evaluation of the incentives provided for professionally qualified linguists, interpreters and translators that would encourage them back to the courts to work. What is being done on that score?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Lords, all the National Audit Office recommendations have been taken on board and are being fully looked at and implemented.

It would appear that Ministry of Justice civil servants and ministers still believe against all the evidence that the system is working well, even though the Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, recently described the affair as: “An object lesson in how not to contract out a public service” (posts passim).

The Capita/ALS court interpreting fiasco (posts passim) is a story that seems set to run for some time yet.

The crossbench (i.e. independent) peer Baroness Coussins, who is also a Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, has tabled an oral question for the government in tomorrow’s House of Lords business.

Her oral question is:

Baroness Coussins to ask Her Majesty’s Government what quality criteria they are using to assess the performance of Capita in delivering interpreting services to the criminal justice system.

Many of us either in or associated to the language and legal professions, as well as those interested in the administration of justice will await the Government’s answer with interest.

Hat tip: Richard McCarthy