Official statistics reveal ALS performance shortfall

The Initial bulletin (http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/mojstats/language-stats/language-service-stats-jan12-april-12.pdf) says that "the data used for these statistics is generated from management information reports taken from the web-based request system."

Does this mean that any bookings made by the HMCTS through other sub-contractors (interpreters direct or other agencies) via other means (direct phone calls, etc) are not included in these statistics? I am aware that registered public service interpreters have been receiving numerous calls from the Listings Staff and other agencies with court interpreting offers all this time.

Another awkward question to be asked on the MoJ

Who is going to foot the bill for all the disruption, cancellations and adjournments and unnecessary custody e.t.c. caused by failures of ALS to perform the contract since 30 January to date?

Does the MoJ monitor the costs of the above at all?

MoJ privatised the provision of interpreting in courts in England and Wales in order to achieve savings to the tune of £18m per year. Is MoJ on track? Do we know how much money MoJ has spent on interpreting services between February and April 2012?

There is nothing on this report mentioning the high rate of unqualiffied interpreters used to fulfill bookings on a daily basis.

Contrary to the Framework Agreement where 3 Tiers of interpreters are strictly outlined and agreed between MoJ and ALS - on a daily basis low tier interpreters (i.e. people without ANY interpreting qualifications, simply bilingual) are used to fulfill Magistrates and Crown Court bookings - this is a clear breach and the Company Investigations Bureau should have a look at this data because this is malpractice.

Dear Court interpreter....

Can I challenge one myth about the projected £18 million a year saving on an annual spend of £60 million.

When tendering this Framework Agreement the MoJ in 2010-2011 stated that they estimate that the ENTIRE !!! Criminal Justice System (CJS) in England and Wales spends c. £60 million pounds a year on procurement of interpreting and translation (langauge) services.

How this figure of £60 million was arrived at is another interesting subject as MoJ admitted that they never had any centralised statistics on the use of interpreters, but let's take this figure of £60 mil p.a. at face value.

The MoJ then stated that they expect to save £18 million p.a. from this £60mil by switching ALL the provision of language services across the ENTIRE CJS !!!!

Which means that ONLY IF ALL the courts ALL the police forces and ALL the probation trusts in the country switched to the Framework Agreement could these expected savings of £18 mil be potentially be achieved. And if the Framework Agreement actually worked as advertised of course.

Here lies the key to this £60 mil / £18 mil myth!!!

At the moment only the courts and Tribunals service are under this Framework + 5 police forces.
A lot of other police forces across the country already have existing contracts with other suppliers which run well into 2013-2015 (For example 6 East Midlands police forces have a contract with an outfit called CINTRA until 2015).

The MoJ estimates the value of the contract with ALS at £25 million a year, but again it was based on assumption that ALS would be able to deliver ALL of the request for interpreters from all the courts.

It is clear to all the professionals who are working or recently worked as police and court interpreters that there now exists a "mixed economy" in the provision of language services to courts.

There are services that ALS is actually able to deliver and bookings it can fill under the Framework Agreement.
There are numerous instances where courts still engage individual interpreters directly under the old terms and conditions and pay rates. We hear that in many cases courts don't even bother contacting ALS first and we all know that in February barely two weeks into the contract the MoJ itself instructed their courts to book individual interpreters directly for hearings due within the next 48 hours.
There are also numerous instances where courts turn to other language service providers to book interpreters. (One wonders on what terms and condition and pay rates these providers deliver services and how these T & C's and pay rates negotiated)

The MoJ does not know what is the exact split of "business" going to ALS, to interpreters direct and to other agencies. That is because by own admission the MoJ does not monitor and does not collect such statistics.
If the "business" is split equally between ALS, interpreters and other agencies then only £8 mil a year of expenditure would go through the provisions of the hapless Framework.
One wonders how on earth does the MoJ expect to evaluate the performance of this contract if they deliberately fail to monitor it and to collect statistics!

I repeat that the very existence of this "mixes economy" is a glaring example of failure of the Framework Agreement, which was supposed to consolidate the provision of language services and to save the courts "ringing around" interpreters and "processing thousands of claim forms".

I am really confused by all of this, apparently there have been 26.000 requests for interpreters in the last 3 months, that does seem a lot to me, how many of these were defendants and how many were witnesses, that is the real question.

The puzzling thing is that when I watch TV News from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, any eastern European country they can almost all speak pretty good English, even the man in the street. In fact watching Eurovision and SoccerAid this weekend I saw that most of the Eurovision entries sang in English, all of those representing their countries in the vote spoke very good English, not the french though, and SoccerAid's visits to India, PhillIpines and a number of African countries introduced many pretty good English speakers in the streets, I also seem to recall the same with all of the other televised AID programmes.

My question therefore is why do all of these people need interpreters?

If there is a genuine need then so be it but If they are defendants and found gui;ty they should be made to pay the interpreter costs, that might just stop them demanding an interpreter and rouse their long lost command of the English language.