Thursday 4 July 2019

PQ: 4th July 2019



Courts: Translation Services
Ministry of Justice written question – answered on 4th July 2019.

Yasmin Qureshi Shadow Minister (Justice)
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the (a) number of court cases rescheduled due to problems with interpreting or translating services and (b) additional cost incurred from that rescheduling in each of the last three years.

Paul Maynard The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice
The Ministry does not hold central data for all jurisdictions and hearing types in which interpreters are used and to manually review each case would incur disproportionate costs. However, central information does exist on the number of trials listed in the criminal courts which were adjourned as a result of interpreters being unavailable. This data is published in Criminal Court Statistics.
A table detailing such occurrences over the last three years for which data is available is copied below.



Crown CourtsMagistrates’ Courts
YearNumber of trialsAdjourned due to interpreter availability% of trials adjourned due to interpreter availabilityNumber of trialsAdjourned due to interpreter availability% of trials adjourned due to interpreter availability
201637,339300.1%149,4234950.3%
201734,579290.1%136,9624230.3%
201829,583170.1%123,0234950.4%


As the associated costs for HMCTS of rescheduling trial cases will vary, depending on whether other work was able to be heard in that courtroom, this information is not held centrally.
The department continues to monitor its language service contracts closely and work with the suppliers to drive improvements and reduce the cost on the taxpayer. The Language Service contract has achieved a fulfilment rate of 97% over the first quarter of 2019.

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