Firm in interpreter storm offers better deal
The firm at the centre of the row over courtroom interpreters says it has taken on more staff and offered cash incentives to improve the service offered under its Ministry of Justice contract.
Gavin Wheeldon, chief executive of Applied Language Solutions (ALS), contacted staff members and self employed interpreters this week following the Gazette’s report of problems encountered by courts using the new hub service.
ALS was awarded a contract by the Ministry of Justice last year to act as the sole supplier of court interpreters, but critics have claimed some staff are not properly trained and court proceedings are being held up as a result. The Professional Interpreters’ Alliance says defendants are being forced to spend extra nights in custody because no one is available in court to translate for them.
In an email sent at the start of this week, Wheeldon said that 21 extra people were being recruited to ensure the service runs more smoothly. A £5 supplement was introduced from Monday for all interpreters who accept bookings through the new automated system, and mileage allowances doubled from 20p to 40p.
In the email, Wheeldon said: ‘I understand this has been frustrating and the system is not perfect yet but please bear with us a bit longer - we will get there I promise!
‘I have thought long and hard about the earnings issue and discussed this internally with management. What we have come up with, I hope, helps us both.’
A spokeswoman for ALS said the firm had no further comment.
On Monday, interpreters protested outside courts in Manchester (pictured) and Bradford against the government’s decision to outsource the service. Further demonstrations are being planned for London and Birmingham.
Last week, the MoJ contacted courts and tribunals to allow them to hire interpreters from other sources where hearings have been cancelled. A spokesman for the department added that the contract will save at least £18m a year on the cost of interpretation and translation, while ensuring high quality interpreters are available.
Comments
A diagnosis somewhat wide of the mark.
I think they are using the wrong medical condition to describe the current situation.
Teething, no terminal!
Amazing. This company had months to prepare for this. Here's where we are..
A booking system which doesn't work. Interpreters who don't turn up. When they do, sometimes they can't interpret or what they interpret is not what is being said.
Lots of other issues, like most of them have not been 'assessed' or vetted or have any qualifications. There are reports that, when they have been able to send someone, native Russian speakers have been interpreting for Polish speakers and so on.
It's just a mess. Most of the interpreters who worked in the old system won't go when court clerks call them to fill the huge gaps in this chaos. Who can blame them, when what they are being asked to do is fill in as a stop gap while a useless contractor tries to get it together. It never will, it's deeply flawed and heading for a nasty crash.
Next week, it will be more of a mess. Perhaps then the 'teething troubles excuse' will be replaced by 'soiled nappy'.
Execution, sir?
My reading of the partial climbdown is that NRPSI interpreters are currently being asked to help the contract regroup. I believe that assisting urgent bookings would only delay a more or less inevitable return to more of the same situation and would effectively be the act of colluding in one's own termination.
I have believed since the start of this a few years ago that one of the key tricks that has been played was that when the fact that a high standard had been set, it meant that NRPSI interpreters were hard to push about. By moving the goalposts and diluting the definition of what was allowed to be described as an interpreter, numbers would go up. One fatal flaw in this approach has been to ignore the fact that numerical superiority doesn't guarantee quality by any stretch of the imagination even though this very reason was given on 5 July last year in one of the Interpretation Project's own communiqués that this was why the NRPSI situation could not continue, that the DPSI was not a reliable guarantee of quality. Well - it was the best we had. I am confident the arguments of those who warned against the decision to use an agency have been vindicated.
I'd like to say something else that might be of use to those who could possibly benefit from a longer view than the kind of knee-jerk short-termism that I think has brought about this ill-conceived plan to save money.
In the NRPSI alone, there was a base of 2300 qualified practitioners. Language service providers on the NRPSI may be qualified and permitted to practice in the Criminal Justice System but a great many also hold qualifications in conference interpreting and in written translation, and in some instances, those people are involved in work in the private sector.
If instead of abandoning that model, any weaknesses (which I believe were wildly overemphasised) being worked on, resolved, strengthened, would only lead to a stronger work force of qualified interpreters and translators. The very nature of language services is that it is by definition a global market and documents are sent to translators in the UK for translation either directly from companies and government agencies in other countries, or by agencies operating in the private sector in those countries. Every time a translator based in the UK does a translation, that income enters the UK economy.
If you help a profession to become stronger, the better the chances are that those people will grow in number and prosper.
I will give an example of one way in which the UK lags desperately behind some other countries: we do not have any system of 'Certified' or 'Sworn' translators. I am talking about written translation of documents, not interpreting. I have been asked to do translations where I am asked if I am a Sworn or Certified translator. The nearest equivalent in the UK is being a member of a body such as the ITI, IOL, APCI, but this is not the same as being a Sworn Translator.
In some instances, it has been good enough to use my memberships of these organisations for this, but in others, the 'nearest next-best thing' approach is not deemed good enough and the client has to turn me down. If there was a system where translators could be Sworn Translators in a simple black-and-white scenario in which you either ARE or are NOT a Sworn Translator, this alone would give practitioners a far clearer market for their skills.
We don't have it for public service interpreting and we don't have it for official translation. What we have is a mess. You used to have to have a certain qualification for interpreting in someone's Crown Court trial but you have never had to have any particular qualification to interpret in someone's medical appointments, sometimes potentially about life/death issues, nor to translate personal documents. This is partly because in the UK, the culture of farming out staggering tranches of this work to agencies has been the norm.
It should have gone the other way - it should have been a case of trying to bring a properly structured system into the public services on a wider basis, where instead of Googling, a solicitor in need of an interpreter will first think of the NRPSI to make their booking, where instead of an agency, a hospital has a booking centre similar to the one Petty France had for the Family Courts.
In the UK, and only in some sectors and from some standpoints, having qualifications is merely viewed as 'helpful', and it is far from across the board. It is not befitting of a country that thinks of itself as an advanced nation. It is barely possible to overstate how wrong that is.
What we have is a race to the bottom.
What we need is a robust profession, protected by statute, whose practitioners can add to the economy as well as acceptance of the arguments already given as to why outsourcing won't help save money. A positive circle, please, instead of this negative cycle.
This ALS is a disgrace. I
This ALS is a disgrace. I know several people who have never been to their assessment and never been vetted and yet they have been offerred jobs at police stations and crown courts. A friend of mine was surprised when he found out that ALS had placed him in tier 2 without him taking part in their so called assessment. He was even more surprised when he received calls offering him tier 1 jobs at courts and police station.
I have sent this information to the interpreting project manager at MoJ and she has acknowledged receipt. It is a disgrace to the way this whole thing has been handled. The UK in this situation seems like some backwarded third world country who can't differentiate right from wrong. Whose commono sense would accept a situation like this? Could they not predict this earlier?
If ALS wasn't aware of the volume of work, how did they bid for the contract. It resembles a situation where in a third world country government officials have been bribed to keep their mouth shut and support whatever situation they are told to.
This is not teething problems, it's full blown scurvy.
You can't service a contract of this scale at the same quality standard when you only have 40% take-up from the existing pool of interpreters. ALS's 'corner the market' strategy has not worked because they've slashed rates so much that it's not economically viable for intepreters to work. Does Gavin Wheeldon not see the cost of petrol when he's filling up his Porsche?
ALS are failing to cover the bookings even when they're using trainee, unqualified interpreters for the most serious cases. How are they suddenly going to achieve the critical mass in a few weeks when they've had months to prepare?
The procurement officers at the MoJ have some answering to do. This contract was awarded to the lowest price bidder who cleared a minimum quality threshold. Given that a firm with interpreting contracts worth a couple of million a year were awarded a contract estimated to be £60m how on earth did that get done?
We need facts
How do you know that ALS has 40% take-up from the existing pool of interpreters? The only fact that is verifiable is that 60% of the existing pool of interpreters signed a declaration that they would not work for ALS. It does not necessarily follow that 40% of those who did not sign such a declaration, have agreed to work for ALS.
Ok, let me re-phrase that
Ok, let me re-phrase that "ALS have up to 40% take-up"
Wheeldon's Porche!
Malcolm,
Not only does Gavin Wheeldon have a Porche, he also owns an Aston Martin DBS, bought from new.
In 2009 ALS was in 'decline' so he made 40 employees redundant (I was one of them). As soon as we were all out of sight he bought himself a brand spanking new Aston. This was literally a few weeks after.
Nice guy, huh?
This is a great comment
This is a great comment Marc.
What happens in this profession in Britain right now is bringing everything to the lowest possible denominator. The denominator set by those who charge less, no matter if it is an agency or an individual 'linguist' lacking any qualifications or self-worth that goes with them. It is quite normal that some 'interpreters' don't even have a BA in languages, they speak pidgin English and hold part-time jobs in bars or restaurants, to get by. Whereas on the other end of this spectrum, we have high profile linguists who undertake complex interpreting or translation work and teach at universities on top of it. And of course, they clash.
We have got hundreds of commercial agencies in Britain right now, set up and run by more or less astute businessmen, who think they have worked out an easy model how to make money. Of course, many of them (or a majority even?) have got nothing to do with language learning, they are there simply to beat the competition by offering their lowest possible rates. Quality is either not a concern at all or a second- or third- grade value, which 'in these difficult times' needs to be compromised, no matter what the cost is. I wonder how would the recipients of translation services (e.g. solicitors, judges, doctors) feel had anything similar been taking place in their profession?
And finally, keeping track of which agency offers what type of work is becoming an impossibility, because there are simply so many and they all fight for different contracts. One huge middle-man, encompassing and draining money from the system, across the whole country. This is the problem and I think it is high time that Britain took a small lesson from other countries and introduced official, statutory requirements, which will regulate who can undertake high calibre translation / interpreting work and how it should be sourced. A single, uniform model, the way it is in many other countries. Because, like many others said before, what we have now is one big mess, no good to anyone.
Follow the money
I came across this uk.gov link to the August 2011 redacted version of the Language Services Framework Agreement, which describes an Alice Through the Looking-Glass version of today's 'interpreter' 'provision'
http://to.ly/ccwB
I tried - but failed - to discover what cancellation terms would apply were the MOJ to withdraw from the contract early.
Any ideas? It has to involve a sum sufficient to inflict serious damage on the bureaucrats' subsequent careers, since they prefer dickering around over this sorry mess to taking a rational view and pulling the plug NOW.
Re Interested Reader's
Re Interested Reader's comment on Fri, 17/02/2012 - 20:59 - " I wonder how would the recipients of translation services (e.g. solicitors, judges, doctors) feel had anything similar been taking place in their profession?", you only have to read some of the other articles in the Gazette to see that solicitors (legal aid solicitors at least) are facing very similar problems. For example, see this article in this week's Gazette:
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/junior-staff-forced-upon-039life-and-death039-care-cases
It seems the MOJ is intent on slashing its costs to the bone, no matter the consequences, but wihtewashing their agenda, so far as the public is concerned, with lies about needing to improve quality (imposing their own emporer's new clothes definition of this) and tired tales of fat cat lawyers. Meanwhile, I suspect their own salaries are many times that of the average interpretor or legal aid solicitor. Well, the chickens will come home to roost; sadly it is only a matter of time before someone suffers an appalling miscarriage of justice - and it will hit the headlines. Maybe then, when it transpires that mistakes were made due to the use of inexperienced and unqualified, albeit cheap, 'professionals', the MOJ will have to start answering questions about the companies they chose to issue contracts to.
I have every sympathy with the genuinely qualified interpretors who are rightfully angry about this. From my own experience, I had a case in which the interpretor clearly did not know the procedural rules. It turned out she was helping the witness by 'rephrasing' her evidence, rather than just interpreting. If course, when this came to light it simply caused huge problems, delay and, therefore of course, unnecessary additional expense.
Interpreters?
I have been registered with the Tribunals Service and its predecessor for the last 23 years and have over 4000 hours of interpreting experience with them, I steadfastly refuse to take the ALS assessment test.Why should I? I have never had any problems and come backs in all these years.
1) I know many interpreters who have a serious problem with the English language! Why are they not required to speak and translate in fluent English? They delay the courts with their inability to interpret clearly and quickly.
2) The ALS will not be able to cope since their rates of pay are ridiculous.They want to book an interpreter for an hour and pay him or her £20 with no travel costs! An interpreter who takes such a booking is a disgrace to their profession!
3)The booking system employed by the ALS is ridiculous.They will phone you at the last minute!
4) The problem with the "old" Tribunal Service booking system was that many of the booking team formed friendships with interpreters and gave them the majority of bookings. For instance in the North West most of the GUJARATI Language bookings were given to 2 interpreters!
So where do we go from here?
The best solution is to go back to the original system of booking...but with a fair booking system...
Re: Anon
I do know that solicitors are also facing problems right now. What I was trying to highlight though is the fact that the profession (i.e. translator / interpreter) is not officially recognised in the UK. Like someone said before, in many other countries, such as Germany, Poland or France you have Sworn Translators and it is a statutory regulated profession, protected by law. In the UK, this doesn't exist. Following the accession of the EU, the country faced a large growth in demand for language services and a proliferation of commercial agencies, who duly tried to satisfy this demand. However, as years went by and economic problems kicked in, the agencies started to struggle, because they live off the public sector institutions and public money. There simply is no room for the middle-men any more and it is high time to regulate the profession and give it proper recognition. The qualifications have been established for many years now (usually a postgraduate degree for translators and the DPSI for interpreters), but there is still no official regulation of the profession itself. I have no doubt this would reduce the cost of immigration hugely.
Report abuse
I am the husband of an NRPSI interpreter. My wife has been interpreting for over 20 years and has had precisely two 5 day trials. She worked hard for her qualifications and registration. She has had one brush with ALS a few years back when two interpreters in her language were called for one case and it then turned out that the person requiring the service spoke a totally different language. I am also concerned that ALS was taken over by Capita and in another context I seem to recall that this business had an alleged dubious record in relation to the administration of pensions payable to former government employees. This thread has made very interesting reading and I am completely baffled as to the attitude of the contributor "interpreter" !
I am witholding my real name in order to protect my wife.
Whenever there is a language
Whenever there is a language barrier there will always be ways to corrupt the system. There does need to be interpreters but they need to be trusted by everyone involved in the situation.
Sometimes we can't tell what is really being said in the news but then sometimes it might be best if we don't know but in a court situation it is imperative.
Write to the minister of State for Justice
If you don't like this situation write to the minister of State for Justice Lord McNally, click "I want to write to this Lord":
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?s=justice&pid=13129&wtt=2
When writing to Lord McNally, refer to the rather dubious answers he made in the House of Lords:
http://www.iol.org.uk/news/news_article.asp?r=PB63KS11093
Good luck!
Welcome to the Ministry of Injustice contract!
Who would work for an agency to be paid only £20 for one hour's attendance for an hour's job in London which would involve paying about £10 from your own pocket for the tube ticket and spending 2-3 hours unpaid for return travel on top of it? This means that you will have to spend 3-4 hours to do one hour job and get only £10 in return (before income tax and NI payments) after travel costs?
When you are told that the earnings would be so little, would you also voluntarily spend £100 from your pocket to pay for an assessment set by the same agency to join the list of their slaves? They said that this was compulsory for anyone qualified or unqualified! I don't think any reasonable person would pay that much to take such silly tests when they already spent hundreds of pounds to take other exams and training which allowed them to join the profession before then.
So, isn't it better for us to sit at home and do other jobs than investing our time, energy and money to help courts when they are desparate if we know that we will get exploited by the agency in return for such poor rates?
Believe me, I used to be very keen on working in public sector by helping courts, police and public agencies at short notice, but I can't let them exploit us by allowing such agencies to profit from our slavery.
As a result of our stance, the agency is so desparate to induce us to accept the unacceptable terms they put in their contract agreement that they are even giving away £250 to interpreters who could persuade others to join! I wonder where that money is coming from? Probably from the taxpayers' pocket!
Following our stance on this issue, they also decided to add only £5 extra for the first hours' work, which you can understand is not sufficient to attract us to spend 1-2 hours commuting in busy London tubes and buses and wasting about £10 from our pocket for the travel card to get to a London court without knowing how long the work will last - probably only for an hour, hence the earnings would be only £15 after the costs for wasting 3-4 hours of our time.
In the mean time, when we accept such jobs, as we often get other work requiring us to attend police stations, for example, at short notice, we will have to turn down such better paid work to continue commuting to the court without any payment for travel. This means that by taking jobs from ALS, we will also take the risk of loosing other opportunities i.e. better paid interpreting jobs, which would pay for our travel time, travel costs and almost twice as much per hour's work! This is called "opportunity cost" in Economics and any educated businessman (not known whether Gavin Wheeldon is included in this category?) should know this concept before setting rates for their employees or contractors.
In brief, as an experienced interpreter, based on my calculations of the capital costs (cost of travel, exam, time wasted for attendance) involved and the opportunity costs (e.g. loss of other better paid jobs) that I will suffer by working for courts through the ALS, I cannot afford to work for ALS. This is because the losses I will suffer will be far greater than gains that I will make by working for them!
They should know that interpreting is not a menial job and not everyone can do it. It requires concentration, memory, listening in one language and at the same time interpreting in the other language simultaneously in a court environment, knowledge of legal proceedings etc. It also involves taking the risks such as not getting any work for weeks and at the same time being available for work any time of the day and night, i.e. changing plans instantly at short notice to adjust to work requests, no guaranteed payment and no guarantee of even getting the payment on time from such companies (this may mean that we will have to keep sending reminders to get what we deserve to be paid. We often have to wait for months to get the payments for our work and in the mean time keep paying the interest on our loans until we get our payments from the agencies).
Courts should think twice before letting such agencies get involved in the justice process. I get so worried about the consequences of this contract that I thought it would be appropriate to call the MoJ as the Ministry of Injustice!
Public services losing interpreters
Let us hope that the MoJ has the good sense to revise its arrangements swiftly.
The remuneration and general treatment of interpreters in the public services have steadily deteriorated over the past 15 years and many have voted with their feet, as I did, during the interminable series of manoeuvres by the uninformed, incompetent and ambitious which have undermined quality.
The situation will only deteriorate further under the contract with ALS and many competent interpreters will be lost to the public services, preferring to earn considerably more under much better conditions in the civil and private sectors.
The situation in PSI has only been sustainable to date thanks to the commitment of the interpreters themselves, who have increasingly started to diversify as their patience is understandably exhausted. Those stepping into take their place have neither the same commitment nor the necessary linguistic, cultural and legal expertise, as the increasing horror stories indicate, making it inevitable that resources will be wasted on all fronts from court time to retrials.
Recent incidents in courts due to ALS failures
To understand the impact of the MoJ contract on the UK justice system, any lawyer should read the real life incidents in courts mentioned on the interpreters' web site where they piled up all the recent incidents they witnessed in courts since the contract with the ALS started about three weeks ago. The link is: www.linguistlounge.org
I am sure you will laugh when you read them, but that's the situation we are in at the moment due to the lack of legal knowledge of the representatives of ALS and their so called "interpreters". Before you and your clients become victims of this unjust practice, lawyers should join interpreters in their fight against the MoJ contract to prove that the new contract is not working. I am sure you can put your experiences there too.
Any person who studied or practised law would laugh when they read the dozens of incidents mentioned on that web site, which include:
1) ALS interpreters turning up in boiler suits, overalls and hats!
2) ALS requesting the court to adjourn the case for two more weeks as they couldn't find an interpreter for a defendant in custody for shoplifting - they are basically expecting the defendant to be kept in custody for two more weeks until they find an interpreter!
3) ALS interpreter for the defendant approaching the victim of domestic violence by saying that she had messages from her husband, just minutes after the defendant was given restraining order barring him from contacting the victim directly or indirectly!
Happy reading!
Lining his own pocket
As an ex-ALS employee I can only feel sorry for the way that the interpreters are being treated. I have known and worked with Gavin Wheeldon and my experience of him is that he is only interested in lining his own pocket. How the MOJ could not see through this guy is beyond me. The company turnsover circa £4m per annum and wins a contract worth £60m per annum? What organisation in it's right mind would award such a contract. ALS have no experience of delivering services on this scale. Wheeldon is good at self promotion and loves publicity, having appeared on Dragons Den (where the Dragons refused the required investment) and Secret Millionaire (where they stretched the definition of millionaire and he gave away one of the smallest donations in the series) but the MOJ should have taken a leaf from of the Dragons on Dragons Den and given him a stern "I'm Out" when asked to sign this contract. This will certainly cost the tax payer yet again because the MOJ were taken in by a chancer.
Applied Language Solutions
Applied Language Solutions paints a very pretty picture.
1. Whilst they are ISO certified they also claim to have the MAIN quality accreditation - DIN EN 15038. This may well be the case but they conveniently forget to inform that this accreditation was bought off the internet.
2. Mr Wheeldon has a habit of employing mates, and mates of mates - the ALS Boys Club. I believe the ALS Interpreting Service Director previously worked at Rentokil (the pest control specialist). I know, I'm laughing too!
3. They absolutely DO say anything to win business, and they win almost everything by slashing a competitors pricing, at the same time promising quality. It goes without saying that client retention is shocking.
4. They claim to work with some of the biggest companies in the world. Looking at their website client listing we know for a fact that 80% no longer use them, for anything. We consider this misrepresentation.
The list really does go on!
What the MoJ is doing awarding a contract of this magnitude to a small company turning over £4M with less than impressive profits, and a single digit credit rating, is unbelievably naive.
All of us here are so thrilled that ALS is now finally being shown as the company they really are! Too many people, partners and customers have fallen into the trap, and it is now time to put the record straight.
It's still a Rotten Deal.
Mr Wheeldon may try his best to convince qualified interpreters to sign up with his company, but the fact remains most will not. It is still a rotten deal which is bad for the justice system, bad for the profession and bad value for taxpayers.
There are very serious flaws in this agreement, the biggest ones being that Applied Language Solutions put in a ridiculously low bid and made a whole range of commitments they cannot keep.
They are trying to introduce a booking system which does not work, make interpreters take an assessment which has no value and make them accept back-back bookings which do not allow for the way the criminal justice system actually works. How did a tiny, loss making company with a turnover of around £6 million win such a huge contract?
Professional interpreters lost confidence in Applied Language Solutions some time ago because of the way it behaves and the way it treats its suppliers and customers. That confidence will never return.
ALS interpreting issues
It is dangerous for ALS to send false interpreters to a Court of Law. On the other hand it is wrong for a Court to allow a false interpreter to interpret in criminal proceedings. Justice is failing in the UK with this MOJ's new system of interpreter booking.
Zakir
The good facts, bad facts and ugly facts of the MoJ contracts
THE GOOD FACTS:
The MoJ has three given THREE contracts for interpreting to ALS:
Contract A:
http://www.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/Common/View%20Notice.aspx?site=1000&lang=en¬iceid=264052&fs=true
£300M over 48 months = £75M per year.
Contract B:
http://www.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/Common/View%20Notice.aspx?site=1000&lang=en¬iceid=352922&fs=true
£125M over 60 months = £25M per year.
Contract C:
http://www.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/Common/View%20Notice.aspx?site=1000&lang=en¬iceid=414414&fs=true
£8M over 57 months = £1.68M per year.
THE BAD FACTS:
The total contract value given by MoJ to ALS = £433 million
The total annual spend by the MoJ on ALS = £102 million
THE UGLY FACTS:
On 5th July 2011, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt) said:
"Moving over to the framework agreement will result in a more efficient and effective service for the public which is forecast to result in savings of at least £18 million on the current yearly spending in this area of £60 million."
So, the MoJ are claiming a saving of £18 million, when in fact it is an ADDITIONAL spend of £42 million.
Now for the final irony, a quote from the film:
"Hey! Hey everybody look! He's giving him the filthy money! JUDAS! You sold my HIDE!"
Only language they understand ?
The above contributions all point to a squalid scandal in the making with the "entrepreneur" at the centre of this conked-out Trabant of a service swanning about in an Aston. A modern Trollope or Dickens would indeed have a field day ! However as is usual with British scandals, the repercussions are dependant on the financial effect on and numbers of those affected. (cf the Poll Tax debacle) As those most affected here are sadly (by definition ) inarticulate foreigners, the repercussions are not huge although they certainly ought to be in a country that professes to believe in the Rule of Law.
My hope is therefore that sufficient numbers of the Judiciary who do believe in the Rule of Law will impose Wasted Costs orders where appropriate and hit those responsible in their pockets-its very very clearly the only language they understand. .