Interpreters
Claim Framework Agreement is killing Justice
Mind your language
The Ministry of Justice’s privatisation and
outsourcing of interpreting services is proving to be more costly and
inefficient than the services they replaced according to Interpreters for
Justice which represents professional interpreters who are members of the
Association of Police and Court Interpreters (APCI) and the Society of Public
Service Interpreters (SPSI).
On 30 January, court interpreting services
were outsourced to a single commercial agency, Applied Language Solutions Ltd,
owned by Capita, to cover the justice sector in England and Wales. Previously
interpreters were booked from the National Register where they had been subject
to security checks and a rigorous registration procedure, and were required to
have postgraduate level qualifications.
According to a recent survey carried out by
Involvis on behalf of SPSI and APCI, up to 90% of Registered Public Service
Interpreters refuse to work under the new system, citing reasons including poor
quality, unacceptably low standards and questionable numbers of workers.
The first three months of the contract have
demonstrated that the agency is struggling to provide an acceptable service.
According to a Crime Line survey, in April
40% of cases requiring an interpreter were disrupted due to no interpreter
attending. Consequently, suspects risk being released into the open, and
defendants are unnecessarily remanded in custody. Victims and witnesses have to
go through traumatic experiences several times. In April, Judge Toby
Hooper QC at Worcester CC had to apologise to a Polish defendant for having to
adjourn his case for a fourth time. He told him, ‘I am ashamed of the system
which fails yet again to provide an interpreter for you.’
Several police forces are already using the
new system and officers have been shocked by its inefficiency. An officer of
West Midlands Police has written on the interpreter web site
linguistlounge.org, ‘On Wednesday I was trying to get a Polish interpreter for
a murder inquiry and was told there was none available until Thursday! It’s a
joke...’
The costs from failed court hearings,
adjournments and applications for Wasted Costs Orders are mounting and it is
anticipated they will cost the public purse much more than the £18 million ALS
claimed it would be able to save. ALS workers have been sent hundreds of miles,
on one occasion from Newcastle to Ipswich for a hearing that lasted eight
minutes. Chief executive of Fair Trials International Jago Russell says, ‘When
Britons are arrested abroad we correctly expect their basic rights to be
respected. We must not, at the same time, neglect the rights of foreign
nationals in our own legal system.’
A recent article on BBC London news
revealed that interpreters’ personal data has been stolen by ALS, where
ALS/Capita holds their details on its database without consent, and a mass complaint
has been made to the ICO for data theft. Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman of the
APCI said to the BBC, ‘Interpreters feel as though they have been used like
cannon fodder, with their details being bought and sold like some kind of commodity’.
Interpreters’ representative bodies
including PIA, SPSI, APCI and SOMI are calling for checks as to the true
identity and vetting status of ALS/Capita workers, as they are receiving ‘the
most alarming reports of organised crime infiltrating the ALS/Capita
recruitment process, which appears unregulated.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said:
‘There have been an unacceptable number of problems in the first weeks of the
contract and we have asked the contractor to take urgent steps to improve
performance.’
Interpreters have put forward proposals for
cost effective and quality assured alternatives for discussion, which have been
rejected out of hand by the MoJ. But they are united in their struggle to
uphold the right of access to justice for all and are expressing in clear and
ever stronger terms their rejection of the FWA.
Source: Police Life, Vol 12, Issue 5, May 2012
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