December 14, 2012 by Helen Warrell
Outsourcing of court interpreting condemned
Justice ministers’ attempts to outsource court interpreting through a £42m contract with a private provider has resulted in “total chaos’’ while providing an “appalling” service, the spending watchdog has found.
A report published on Friday by the public accounts committee chastises
the Ministry of Justice for its decision to award the
interpreters’ contract to Applied Language Solutions – now owned by Capita –
and not punishing the company for substandard delivery.
The department is accused of failing to question whether ALS could
supply the required 1,200 specialist staff, when only 280 were available at the
time the system went live in January. Given the staff shortages, the company
was able to meet only 58 per cent of bookings against a target of 99 per cent.
But so far, ALS has only been fined £2,200 for disrupted services and no
penalties were levied at all during the first four months when the shortages
were at their worst.
Margaret Hodge, chair of the committee, described the deal as a lesson
in how not to contract a public service. “Almost everything that could go wrong
did go wrong,” Ms Hodge said.
“Court officials have had to scramble to find qualified interpreters at
short notice; there has been a sharp rise in delayed, postponed and abandoned
trials; individuals have been kept on remand solely because no interpreter was
available; and the quality of interpreters has at times been appalling,” she
added.
Helen Grant, justice minister, responded that the department had “strong
reasons” to change the old interpreter booking system, which the National Audit
Office had judged to be inadequate in several ways.
“We have now seen a major improvement in performance – more than 95 per
cent of bookings are now being filled, complaints have fallen dramatically and
we are continuing to push for further improvement,” Ms Grant said.
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