ALS interpreters contract facing renewed scrutiny
The deal between the Ministry of Justice and the private company contracted to provide court interpreters is to face scrutiny from parliamentary watchdogs, as cases continue to be disrupted by poor performance and non-attendance of interpreters.
Public spending watchdog the National Audit Office told the Gazette that it has received ‘a number of representations’ about the Applied Language Solutions contract from parties including members of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, and said it is ‘considering the matter’.
Meanwhile the Commons Justice Committee said it has received correspondence and is likely to ‘pursue the matter’, either as a standalone project or as part of a wider examination of the court service. In March, the committee questioned Peter Handcock, head of the court services, on the contract and what could happen if performance levels, which in its first week were quantified at just 40%, did not improve.
Committee chair Sir Alan Beith told the Gazette that it is ‘subjecting to scrutiny the performance of the contract’, taking up with Handcock criticisms of interpreters’ attendance and quality. ‘We’ve put questions in writing to [Handcock] to find out records of the number of adjournments etc, what feedback they have had about the contract, the qualifications required by the interpreters and the fulfilment of the contract,’ said Beith.
Meanwhile, the resident judge at Snaresbrook Crown Court, David Radford, alleged that the contractual arrangements had been ‘introduced without the full board approval of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service, including the judicial representatives’.
In an interview with the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association, he said the change to one contractor to provide interpreters, rather than courts individually booking interpreters from a national register, had ‘badly affected’ his own court. Radford said the MoJ did not ‘sufficiently have in mind the whole country’ when the new arrangements were rolled out nationally after a pilot on the northern circuit.
The contract, awarded to Oldham-based ALS, began on 1 February. It is intended to cut the MoJ’s £60m annual spend on interpreters by £18m. Weeks after the contract was awarded, ALS was acquired by support services company Capita.
Many interpreters who had provided their services directly to the courts under the old regime have refused to work for ALS, citing concerns over fees and quality of service.
Comments
Interpreters warned MoJ and proposed savings
It beggars belief that the MoJ got into this mess despite written detailed warnings from all the interpreters' membership organisations as from the Summer of 2010. These organisations made it clear that they knew how to secure savings close to 46% plus year on year pointing to Cambridgeshire police and Welsh constabularies where dialogue had resulted in these savings whilst ensuring that interpreters were sourced only from the NRPSI or other National Agreement authourised lists. This was said in meetings and backed up by detailed written proposals. However, they were consistently ignored by MoJ civil servants headed by Martin Jones. Since February interpreters have offered talks and requested meetings and written to Kenneth Clarke and Crispin Blunt early in April. The MoJ has again ignored interpreters and persists in the misguided belief that things are improving when all the evidence flowing form the courts negates such head in the sand pronouncements compounded by the refusal to provide figures the MoJ is plainly concealing.
Proper scrutiny is long overdue
Proper scrutiny of the Ministry of Justice's Framework Agreement with Applied Language Solutions / Capita Group plc is long overdue. The Ministry of Justice appears to have extremely weak management and financial controls and I am not surprised that the National Audit Office has had issues signing off MOJ accounts.
The MOJ and its political masters appear to lack a basic understanding of the concept of "control" in the sense of business and financial management. In many of the replies to Freedom of Information requests relating to court cases requiring interpreters, the evasive replies have stated that the MOJ does not collate statistics centrally and that the contractor will supply information about performance in the first quarter of operation, which will be released in May. The MOJ as the purchaser of the service should be collating its own management information, not relying on the contractor to provide it! Where is the management and financial control in such an arrangement? Does the MOJ just accept all ALS's assertions at face value and pay the bill without checking anything? If so, it is no wonder we have arrived at the farcical situation we are in, which will cost the taxpayer dear.
The official statistics relating to the first quarter are due to be released on Thursday 24th May. I sincerely hope that they will be sensibly compiled showing the total numbers of cases requiring interpreters and the actual numbers sourced directly through the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, through other agencies and through ALS under the Framework Agreement.
Only presenting the ALS side of the story - the figures relating to the cherry-picked subset of the total requirements, which ALS is attempting to service - would make a mockery of any claim to openness and impartiality in the presentation of the statistics. Showing the number of ALS subcontractors appearing in court to act as interpreters as a percentage of a total that is not the whole would not give a fair picture of the situation. The totals MUST include all the next day cases in Magistrates' Courts, which ALS has not even been attempting to service after their false start, all the instances when police have booked interpreters for court outside the FWA, all the instances when solicitors or other professionals involved have booked interpreters directly for use by the courts in order to circumvent the FWA, all the instances when tribunals have cancelled interpreter bookings hours after the appointed start time due to court staff's understandable frustration (likely to appear as client cancellations rather than failures to deliver in ALS statistics), as well as those instances when courts have booked from the NRPSI in advance because they wanted to ensure that cases went ahead - otherwise the statistics will be highly dubious, or perhaps useless.
I use the words "ALS subcontractors appearing in court to act as interpreters" advisedly because interpreter quality has proved to be yet another can of worms. Numerous cases have been observed where the ALS subcontractor does not even know that they are supposed to interpret in whispered mode when the defendant is not being addressed directly, and makes no attempt to translate such exchanges. Again there is an issue of lack of control as the MOJ appears to take ALS's assertions regarding quality at face value, whereas it has been evident that many of ALS's "experienced interpreters" have never been in court before.
I am slightly concerned at Sir Alan Beith's wording on the issue of quality: the "qualifications required by the interpreters" are already known as they are specified in the Framework Agreement. The issue is that many of the ALS interpreters appearing in court don't have them... an issue of control.
This contract will destroy
This contract will destroy the Justice system. Non English speakers are denied justice. A defendant cannot and must not go to prison because of the poor performance of the ALS so called bilingual. The contract has failed but MoJ wants to make it a success forcefully, but it will not succeed. The delay will create more problems for MoJ and ALS.
police and court interpretng
I can work with the agency and appreciate that we get proper expenses on long distance journeys.
The lack of minimum fee and the low interpreting wages however does not give us an income when doing local work. The expenses can also be lesser on local work.
Doing local work is convenient and does not demand all the expenses incurred n the case of long distance work.
Doing a lot of travelling and often not much interpreting makes our division of time disproportionate and can incur high expenses.
One would like to do more local work in a way that one can make ends meet.
Why should the public pay?
I see no reason why the public purse should pay for interpretors. UK residents should be required to speak English (or possibly Welsh) and if they cannot then they should provide their own interpretors, foreign tourists should be made to pay for them out of their travel insurance, successful asylum seekers should be made to repay once they start earning, leaving only the ones deported as a drain on the rest of us.
Dashed foreigners !
As its the public purse that pays for people who can`t speak the lingo to stay in jail, its often cheaper for the public purse that the Court is certain as to what they are trying to say (and pronto !) so as to keep them out of jail !
Giving free rein to Billionaire-Tabloid-induced prejudice towards usually-mythical "scroungers" like the above comment attempts, may only lead to higher public expense in the long run.
In reply Graham Williams:
In reply Graham Williams: what should you do if you don't speak English, are wrongly accused of rape and have no money to pay for an 'interpretor'? Go through the case not understanding the proceedings, get convicted, and go to prison innocent of any crime for a decade or two?
Insurance
Simply if you come to the UK and don't speak English be prepared. Ensure you have travel insurance that covers your legal costs
Silly me- and there was I
Silly me- and there was I thinking that the aim of the courts was to provide justice for all, not just those without some form of insurance or personal wealth.