25 March 2013
Courts: Translation
Services
Justice
Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak,
Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what
estimate he has made of the savings to his Department as a result of the
implementation of the ALS/Capita contract for court translation and
interpreting services.
Helen Grant (Maidstone and The
Weald, Conservative)
The estimate of savings under the language services
call-off contract with Capita is based on the pre-contract spend of
approximately £30 million each year. This covers courts, tribunals and the National
Offender Management Service.
The savings in the first year of the contract's
operation are estimated at £15 million.
25 March 2013
Courts: Translation
Services
Justice
Stephen
McCabe (Birmingham,
Selly Oak, Labour)
To ask
the Secretary of State for Justice if he will review (a) how many people
have been wrongly convicted and (b) the number of potentially guilty
people acquitted as a result of errors by translators employed under the ALS/Capita
contract; and if he will make a statement.
Helen
Grant (Maidstone
and The Weald, Conservative)
We have
no plan at present to undertake any review of convictions or acquittals in
interpreter court cases.
The
judiciary is responsible for ensuring that defendants get a fair hearing. If
there are any issues with interpretation the judge will stop the proceedings
and resolve those issues. The Ministry of Justice monitors performance under
the contract, which has an associated complaints system. Only a very small
proportion of complaints relate to the quality of the interpreter. We have
received no complaints that wrong convictions have been made as a result of
problems with interpreters.
No comments:
Post a Comment