Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Outsourcing of Court Interpreting Services

By Aisha Maniar
Full article at:  http://onesmallwindow.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil-outsourcing-of-court-interpreting-services/
Originally published 6 February 2013

From schools and hospitals to the police force, almost all vital public services are affected by the current cuts and privatisation agenda. Often poorly thought through, many of these government programmes are inefficient, counterproductive and lead to greater costs at the public expense. The decision to privatise court interpreting services, covering foreign language and deaf interpreting in England and Wales, which marked its first anniversary on 30 January, is no exception.

Legal interpreters, translators and other language service providers have long been an essential part of the justice system. The ability to understand the case against you and to understand the process you are subject to, either as a plaintiff or defendant, is a vital part of the right to a fair trial, and is guaranteed both by centuries-old common law and Articles 5 (right to liberty and security of person) and 6 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights. This will be reinforced in October this year when EU Directive 2010/64/EU on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings comes into force. Answering questions about this privatisation contract in the House of Lords on 9 July 2012, Lord McNally Minister of State for Justice stated that the courts receive some “some 800 requests a day for such interpretation”.

In an attempt to make savings here too, of up to a reported £12 million per year, as well as to make the system more efficient, the Ministry of Justice (Ministry) entered a 4-year framework agreement in August 2011 worth £168 million with a small private language service provider, Applied Language Solutions Ltd (ALS), to provide legal interpreting services potentially across the whole justice system (police, courts, prisons, etc.). A further 5-year contract, under the framework agreement (“agreement”), worth £90 million signed by the Ministry in October 2011 and taking effect in January 2012, covering mainly the courts and tribunals, has courted much controversy. It has been the subject of two parliamentary select committee inquiries, with the Justice Select Committee (JSC) publishing its report today.

Due to failings by both parties to the agreement, the new system proposed under the framework agreement fell apart long before it went live in January 2012. Under the old system, governed by a National Agreement, interpreters were largely picked from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NPRSI), the UK’s independent voluntary regulator for the interpreting profession formed in 1994. With a register of over 2200 interpreters covering over 100 languages, professionals qualify following rigorous rules relating to their qualifications and skills. Following the signing of the framework agreement, some of the provisions of the National Agreement were dis-applied to fit the new situation. The old system was not ideal, but neither is the manner in which the Ministry has proceeded, both with the procurement and implementation of the agreement. In its report, the Public Affairs Committee (PAC) criticised the Ministry for not being “an intelligent customer in procuring language services, despite the risks posed to the administration of justice and to the Ministry’s reputation.”

Qualified interpreters and their representative bodies who had been informed (or “consulted”) about the changes in advance largely refused to cooperate and work with ALS and expressed their resolution not to. The proposals under the agreement would see the rates paid to interpreters slashed significantly, as well as the introduction of other costs, and a new tier system for the qualification of interpreters, which lacks independent regulation and falls far below the current high level of qualification. Having failed to do its homework on what was involved in the whole process, the Ministry seems to have not realised that interpreters are key to interpreting services. When the service went live on 30 January 2012, ALS had only 280 interpreters signed up out of the 1200 the Ministry considered necessary for its operation and problems immediately arose with supply and quality. In its first month of operation, ALS only managed a 58% successful service. Marred by constant criticisms and delays, as well as questions raised by courts about the quality of the interpreters provided, in the first quarter of 2012, 182 magistrates court trials were recorded as ineffective due to interpreter availability issues as opposed to 95 in the same period in the previous year. As a result, within weeks, many had reverted back to the old system, which was retained as a contingency. Operation levels are those reported by ALS without independent verification.



In making the agreement, there has been a failure to acknowledge the qualitative side of efficiency and savings, a problem which appears to persist. The sidelining of interpreters in the process reinforces a myth that interpreting (and translating) is something that anyone who speaks a little bit of two or more languages can do and is a good way to earn some pocket money, as opposed to being a profession practiced by highly qualified, skilled and experienced individuals. Contrary to the false notion, the ability to interpret complex materials that could well baffle an educated monolingual speaker is not a skill the average child growing up in Newham, the UK’s most diverse area, acquires proficiently by the age of seven; similarly, a long weekend in Bucharest or the ability to sing the whole of hit pop song Dragostea Din Tei does not qualify a person as an interpreter of Romanian. In many cases, even a university degree is not enough to cut the mustard.

Legal interpreting is all the more complex: many cases involving just English often hinge on the “interpretation” of a particular word or action. Appearing before a court under any circumstances is a daunting prospect for most people, and to have to be subject to a court process in a foreign language is all the more unnerving. The English legal system can be difficult to understand even to those who know no other; interpreters regularly have to negotiate the gulf between different legal systems, cultural sensitivities on both sides, complex ideas and language from judges and barristers, as well as cultural issues within the same language community, such as politics, gender and ethnicity. The Law Society has reported that interpreters are particularly needed in immigration and criminal cases. The many newspaper reports over the past year of failings under the ALS/Ministry agreement include rape, murder and assault cases, as well as cases in which the interpreter and the plaintiff/defendant, although from the same country, could not understand each other as they do not speak the same language or the same dialect of a language. In some cases, an interpreter was sent for the wrong language. Although not always reported to them, judges and lawyers are acutely aware of the quality issues that persist. None of this helps to foster trust between the interpreter and the person they interpret for, which is essential for the task to be carried out properly, nor does it engender broader confidence in the courts’ ability to administer justice.

Lord McNally reported that in the first quarter of the operation of the agreement 26,000 requests were made for interpreters in 142 languages. Now performing at a reported 95% service delivery rate, both ALS and the Ministry put the problems down to early “teething problems”. Although improvements have been made, some problems have not gone away and have exacerbated with the passage of time, such as the decline in quality, which inevitably results in a decline in the courts’ ability to ensure justice. The majority of NRPSI-qualified interpreters have refused throughout to work for ALS. Given the option to contact interpreters directly under the old system, some have returned to the courts when contacted in this way or by solicitors. In spite of claims of a deliberate boycott by interpreters, as well as harassment of ALS interpreters in court, such a situation cannot realistically persist for over a year, especially not when most, if not all, interpreters are self-employed and are only paid for work they do. It is more likely that many have found their skills valued in the private sector, other areas of public interpreting work or in translation, or have found other work. For many, working under the conditions offered by ALS is simply not a choice: the cost of working, with respect to travel, time spent and administrative costs, can be more expensive than not. Former Justice Minister Crispin Blunt blamed what he termed “grossly overpaid” interpreters earning “six-figure salaries” for the early failures of the agreement. The overall effect, particularly the lowering of standards, can only be detrimental to both the interpreting and legal professions.

In addition to this, just weeks after the October contract was signed with the Ministry, ALS was acquired by Capita in December 2011, and is now known as Capita Translation and Interpreting. The company was acquired for £7.5 million with a further one million pounds paid to cover a debt. Given that all of the 126 companies involved in the original 2010 tender were small and medium enterprises, which most language service providers in the UK are, it is not clear that Capita would have been eligible to bid on its own merit. While the company has no previous involvement in language services, it is well known for its large stake in public sector outsourcing. Until the system changes later this year, and the current criminal record bureau (CRB) checks which are mandatory for interpreters are replaced, Capita is also responsible for providing this public service. Another immigration service related contract awarded by the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) to Capita last year saw the company send e-mails and text messages to thousands of migrants, including students, workers and investors, to leave the country as they were not lawfully resident; in many cases, the opposite was true. Although Capita is well known for its mismanagement of public contracts, the Ministry felt reassured by its involvement. The senior management of ALS, previously majority shareholders in the company and thus the recipients of the fee paid for the company, left ALS/Capita by mutual consent in July 2012...

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