18 April 2016 by Monidipa Fouzder
MoJ imposes ‘service
credits’ on Capita for missing interpreting target
Days before latest statistics for courtroom
interpreting are published, the Ministry of Justice has revealed that the
current monopoly service provider has paid ‘service credits’ on 44 occasions
for failing to meet its contractual requirement.
Statistics published by the ministry show
that Capita Translation and Interpreting has continuously fallen short of the
98% performance target stated in the contract.
Latest
figures show that Capita TI completed 97% of requests for language services
between July and September 2015, the highest success rate since the contract started
on 30 January 2012.
Responding
to a question by shadow minister for human rights Andy Slaughter last week,
justice minister Shailesh Vara said service credits can be imposed on Capita
‘in line with the terms of the contractual level of 98% success rate’.
From the
beginning of the contract in January 2012 until September 2015, Capita TI paid
'service credits’ on 44 occasions, Vara said.
‘The
contract has delivered significant improvements so far and we now have a system
that is robust, sustainable and able to deliver a quality service at an
affordable level,’ he added.
‘Since we
introduced a new interpreting contract in 2012, we have spent £38m less on
language service fees.’
Earlier
this month Capita told the Gazette it will be bidding for only one of
four lots of a new contract scheduled to
begin on 31 October.
In line
with the government’s stated policy for public procurement, the successor
contract has been broken into four lots: face-to-face interpretation (1);
written translation and transcription (2); non-spoken language interpretation
(3); and independent quality assurance (4).
Capita
has confirmed it is bidding only for lot 2, written translation and
transcription.
The
ministry will publish figures for completed service requests from 1 January
2013 to 31 December 2015 on Thursday.
