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"It is ridiculous that UK taxpayers have to fund this level, largely to assist people who have both failed to learn to speak our language and committed offences."

(1) UK taxpayers: a group of people that includes foreign nationals.

(2) People who need interpreters:
- Suspects. They have only committed an offence if they admit guilt or are found guilty.
- Witnesses - who haven't committed offences.
- Complainants - see 'Witnesses'.

(3) There is one on every single Law Society Gazette thread who makes the absurd point that the people who are provided with an interpreter haven't bothered to learn the language.

First of all, have you been in every court in the country to see each and every one of these thousands of cases take place and do you know for a fact that none of these people has bothered to learn English?

It's a wildly varying mix of individuals and circumstances. Some are visitors, some are people with perfectly competent conversational English but still not strong enough to be guaranteed to understand court proceedings and there are others who I'm sure haven't quite grasped English to any great degree but while it could be lack of effort in some cases, some people come to England and aren't even in an environment where they're likely to get past basic conversation - for instance people who come to work in communities of their own nationality and/or language.

I know - let's just leave them floundering in court without interpreters and see how that goes.

Ah ... hang on ... the MOJ seems to have embarked on an experiment designed to achieve exactly that from January 2012. That seems to have gone well, hasn't it!

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