PQ: 13 October 2025

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.