https://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2025-10-13b.58.2
Amendment
181
Border
Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill - Committee
(6th Day) – in the House of Lords at 6:00 pm on 13 October
2025.
Moved
by Baroness Coussins
181:
After Clause 48, insert the following new Clause—“Translation and
interpreting servicesImmigrants and asylum seekers shall have the
right, when needed, to professional, qualified translators and
interpreters in relation to all oral and written communications
concerning—(a) deportation,(b) detention,(c) control,(d) biometric
data,(e) residency schemes and rules,(f) monitoring devices,(g)
appeals,(h) accommodation, and(i) any other procedure mentioned in
Part 2.”
Baroness
Coussins
Crossbench
My
Lords, Amendment 181 in my name is very straightforward indeed. The
noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, and the noble Lord, Lord
Sherbourne of Didsbury, have kindly added their names to it; both
regret that they are unable to be present this evening.
The
amendment seeks, quite simply, to ensure that any immigrant or asylum
seeker who needs interpreting or translation services in connection
with the procedures in Part 2 of the Bill has access to qualified
professionals who can provide those language services. I declare my
interests as the co-chair of the APPG on Modern Languages and the
honorary president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
I
rather hope that it will be a no-brainer for the Government to accept
this amendment, given that, when it was in opposition, Labour was
such a strong supporter of similar amendments that I proposed to the
then Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and the then Victims
and Prisoners Bill. I am sure that the Minister will understand the
case for this amendment very well, so I will not waste time spelling
it out in unnecessary detail. I emphasise just two points: first, why
it is important to specify the need for qualified professionals, as
opposed to anyone who happens to speak a bit of the language in
question; and, secondly, why there is a need to have this in the
Bill.
First,
we know from work that has been undertaken for several years on the
provision of interpreters and translators in courts and tribunals
that public service interpreters do a highly skilled job, often in
difficult and possibly life-changing circumstances for the person
concerned. A thorough independent review commissioned by the MoJ in
2022 as a result of discussions I had with the then Minister, the
noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, has resulted in welcome changes and
clarifications in the MoJ’s expectations and requirements for the
levels of qualification and experience that must be held by
interpreters in our courts.
My
amendment seeks simply to see this rigour and professionalism rolled
over and replicated in the context of services to immigrants,
refugees and asylum seekers. We are looking at issues, procedures and
decisions that will be triggered by the measures in Part 2 and which
could be critical and life-changing to people, many of whom may have
already experienced danger, trauma and fear. Whether it is the rules
on residence schemes, the mechanics of getting biometric data, the
purpose of monitoring devices or the appeals system, they deserve—and
need—no less than to have any and all oral and written
communications both in a language they understand and delivered by
qualified professionals familiar with the relevant terminology.
Casual use of a lay speaker of what is thought to be the right
language will not do. Google Translate will not do.
Secondly,
the reason I think that this right needs to be spelled out in the
Bill is twofold. First, unless the Minister can give me a categorical
assurance that my worries are unfounded—believe me, I would be
delighted if he could—I am concerned that the Retained EU Law
(Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 might not, in this context, offer
protection of the right to interpreting and translation services. In
an answer to an Oral Question on that subject in 2023, the then
Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, advised that
there would be no adverse effect on this right as it was enshrined in
common law and the ECHR. However, I would like to be reassured that
subsequent legislation, such as this Bill, is also covered. In any
case, I want to see those two vital words—“professional” and
“qualified”—spelled out as part of the right to which people
are entitled.
The
second reason for wanting to see this amendment in the Bill is, I am
afraid, a feeling of nervousness based on past experience; if all I
hear from the Government is an assurance that this right already
exists, or that it might be mentioned in some future operational
guidance or code, then that will not cut it for me. When the Victims
and Prisoners Act was going through its final stages in this House,
the then Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, agreed
that the victims’ code should be amended to state that interpreting
and translation services should be provided by qualified
professionals. In pushing for this, I was very glad to have the
strong support, on the record, of the then Opposition Front Bench—now
His Majesty’s Government. The trouble is, however, that the
important change has never come to fruition; the promised public
consultation on this and other amendments to the victims’ code has
never happened. Therefore, there is still no guaranteed right to
those language services being professionally provided. I want to see
this right clearly spelled out in this Bill, so that there is no
excuse or wiggle room for short-changing some of the most vulnerable
people in circumstances where they need to understand exactly and
reliably what is happening to them.
A
brief final point is that my amendment is needed in the interests of
the Home Office, as well as of immigrants and asylum seekers. The
exclusive use of qualified professional interpreters and translators
will help to achieve absolute clarity as to the claimant’s case,
thereby avoiding any potential later dispute or allegation that the
Home Office has misunderstood the claim so it must be reconsidered.
For all these reasons, I beg to move.
[...]
Baroness
Coussins
Crossbench
My
Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and for his very clear
statement that the Government agree that they have a moral and legal
obligation to make sure that people in these situations clearly
understand what is happening. Rather than just writing to me, will he
agree to have a meeting with me between now and the Bill’s next
stage, so that we can both understand better what the EU law Act 2023
said, and so that I can understand more about paragraph 339 of the
Immigration Rules which he referred to? It would be very good if
those two things hit the spot of what I am after.
The
points that other noble Lords made are absolutely correct. The issue
about costs is a question of weighing up the balance between not
providing these services and facing the costs of potential appeals
and challenges later on. It would be useful for the Home Office to
speak to colleagues in the MoJ about its independent review of the
qualifications and experience for court interpreters and the costs
involved in adjourned cases needing to be reheard because an
interpreter, or the correct interpreter with the correct language,
has been absent. That might be useful for building the case here.
On
the question of artificial intelligence raised by the noble Lord,
Lord Harper, all I can do at this point in the evening is to recap,
very briefly, what I have said before in this House. I am not against
machine translation or AI
in principle, but we have to be really careful about it at the
moment. AI training data up to this point means that, although
machine translation works very well indeed for the standard Romance
languages such as French, Spanish and Italian, and for German, it is
much less reliable for languages with many dialects, such as Arabic.
At the moment, it is almost useless for tonal languages, such as
Mandarin, and for many African languages. Those may well be the
languages that are needed in the circumstances that we are talking
about today. Let us not rush to rely on it but wait until AI training
data has brought it up to standard.
With
that, I look forward, I hope, to the opportunity of meeting the
Minister to discuss this in more detail. With that note of cautious
optimism, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment
181 withdrawn.
Amendments
182 and 183 not moved.
