Interpreting Services in the Courts (Public Services Committee Report)
Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts(1 day, 17 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Morris of Yardley
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Public Services Committee Lost in translation? Interpreting services in the courts (2nd Report, HL Paper 87).
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this debate on the Public Services Committee’s report, Lost in Translation? Interpreting Services in the Courts. Before doing so, I congratulate the new Minister on her appointment. I understand that this is the first of her parliamentary appearances; we are pleased about that. We have set a bit of a habit here because, when Minister Sackman came to speak to our committee, she had been in her post for two weeks, so we had exactly the same situation. The only good news from that Minister’s point of view, I suppose, is that she is still there, which stands us in good stead in terms of the length of service of the Minister here. We welcome the Minister to her post and we hope that she will take the opportunity to concentrate and focus on this, her first report, to see whether we can make a real difference.
I begin by thanking our committee team: Dan Hepworth; Tom Burke; Claire Coast-Smith; Clayton Gurney; Gemma Swan, who was our POST student and was very good; and Lara Orija. I also thank the officials at the MoJ and the Courts Service, who were unstintingly helpful and timely; the committee cannot say that about every government department, so we are very grateful. Although we have not always agreed with them, we have appreciated the working partnership that they have had with our committee clerk and their team.
This is an important part of the justice system, but it is not a large part. There will be some courts that do not make much use of translators, and there will be some for whom it is an everyday occurrence. Together, there are 17,000 bookings a month in more than 150 possible languages, so, for the people whose lives and cases are affected by this issue, it is absolutely crucial and 100% important. If it goes wrong, it not only has an impact on the people concerned, such as the accused and defendants, but leads to an unravelling in the way in which the courts work in terms of delayed cases and having to hear cases again.
The committee does not underestimate the difficulty of this service. If we had been talking about this 10, 15 or 20 years ago, the languages that were used most would have been different from what they are now. This is a changing game and I appreciate that that must make it difficult to make sure that the right people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time. The way in which the judicial system works means that 27% of the bookings are made only 24 hours before a case is heard, with 9% made only three hours before. That is difficult. To make that work efficiently and effectively, you need to be on top of the administration and you need to have a good cadre of people to call on.
I pay tribute to the translators. They are a hugely committed and talented group of people. The evidence that they gave us, particularly in the round tables we held with them, was important; indeed, it was instrumental in our findings. Although members of the committee who will speak today and the report have their criticisms, they are not of the translators but of the system. That is an important point to make.
The strange thing about this inquiry was that, as one often finds, it was like talking to groups of people who are describing totally different things. You think, “Unless we can get to the point where they’re describing the same thing, no progress will be made”. What we got here, in terms of differences of opinion, was the Minister saying, “It’s not perfect but it’s doing a solid job. There’s a low number of complaints and a high fulfilment rate”. We also had thebigword—the contractor that runs the service—saying that things were done
“consistently within the minimum service rates”
when describing how it works. However, let us look at the lawyers—the other bit of the judicial system—who work on that. The Bar Council said:
“Although there are committed and talented interpreters … the overall standard is not acceptable and not delivering justice”.
The Magistrates’ Association noted
“the frequent failure to book interpreters, leading to delays”.
If we then talk to the translators, they describe a set of circumstances that are inappropriate for any group of workers, let alone for people with such a key role in one of our most important public services. I imagine that some members of the Select Committee, and others speaking here today, will talk about the conditions for interpreters, because that underpins a lot of what is going wrong in the service.
I do not want to go over the facts and figures. Instead, I will give two examples from the interpreters who gave evidence, which have stayed in my mind and which sum up what happens. The first was about not being valued, which came from an interpreter in response in an unrelated question; we did not ask a question about that. I did not realise that if an interpreter goes to the court to do their job, they queue with the public and wait until the doors to the public are open before they get into the court. Everyone else connected with the case—the judges, barristers, magistrates and court clerks—goes in through the staff entrance. That is utterly appalling and sums up what is wrong with the culture. Just think what message that gives about their importance and value. Imagine how that hampers their job: if they are at the end of the queue, the time that they might have had—for example, to talk to the barrister, to meet their client or to check some legal nicety—is absolutely gone.
I looked at the Minister’s MoJ staff who are present for this debate today. There are four of them; I could not spot the fourth, but at least two have day passes. They have not been right the way through the security system. They do not have passes like the rest of their staff—only the one at the end has a full pass; the others have day passes. If the MoJ can provide day passes for their staff to support them in this Committee, why can they not arrange for the courts to organise day passes for interpreters to do their job effectively with the people with whom they work?
The second example was about pay. It was the story of one man who had to travel a long way to do his job; I think it was in Wales. He had a language that was not in frequent use. Because of the timing of the case, he booked trains to go and to come back, and they had to be at peak times; I think he was going from London to Cardiff. The night before, the case was cancelled. He got one hour’s pay, but he did not get the travel cost, and so the one hour’s pay did not cover the cost of his train fare. Why would he do it again? Why would he respond to any request to do that again?
Those examples are anecdotal, but they are evidence. Those issues are repeated time and time again. There are specific problems with pay and travel, but the overall issues always come down to the system’s view of the role that these people play in our court system—and that is what has to change.
We therefore have a difference of view. We have people in the same system who are meant to be jointly delivering the same service, but who describe that service in very different ways. It is difficult to work out why that is the case. One reason is that the data and the quality system do not provide all the accurate information that is needed. If you look at the figures, you could say that they are not bad; you could say that there has been an improvement in the last quarter or that there has been a complaint in only 1% of cases. However, if you look deeper at the figures, you will see that many statistics do not get reported.
There are also inconsistencies and contradictions in that data; I will mention just two. First, we never got an answer to the question as to why the unfulfilled requests are higher than the number of ineffective trials. If they did not get an interpreter, how did the case go ahead? Who did they use to do the interpretation? Secondly, we never got an answer to the question as to why off-contract bookings are higher than the number of unfulfilled requests. You are not meant to go to an off-contract booking unless you cannot fill the role with someone from the primary contractor, so how did that also go wrong?
On the quality control system and 1% level of complaints, quite honestly the Bar Council and magistrates were bewildered that they should ever finish a case at lunchtime, rush off to the next case in the afternoon and have time to make a complaint that the interpreter had not turned up in between. That data is not capturing the reality of what is happening in the interpretation service. We cannot rely on those figures and it is no good quoting them back and saying that all is well in the world of courts and interpreters. The Government have to ask themselves the difficult questions.
We welcome some of the Government’s responses, including more coherent sets of data, refreshed guidance, improved welfare provision and strengthening safeguarding proposals. We welcome all those. There is a bit of me that thinks that that was the easy bit and a lot of me that thinks that the difficult bits were not responded to as positively as that. We welcome their commitment to Ann Carlisle’s report on qualifications, but it means that 80% of cases will need level 6 qualifications and 20% will need level 3. I have heard nothing yet to reassure me that the system, thebigword and the contractors will have anything place in as quick a time as is necessary.
I turn now to the contract, because it is on the contract that all rests. The reason we did not get answers on pay, conditions and travel expenses is that every answer from the department is, “It’s in the contract. It’s up to the contractor. It’s up to whoever wins the contract”. We have to remember that, prior to 2012, it was delivered centrally as a national agreement. This contracting and outsourcing has not had an easy start. It did not go well in 2012—the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Commission have made that point—and the present contract sits in that context. It had to be very good to wipe from people’s minds that memory of a very bad start.
I will talk a bit about the problems with contracting out and why this is one of the sources of what is going wrong. I will give one example, which ties in with the other things that we have talked about. The contract was let to this provider in 2016. There has been no pay increase for interpreters since then—not one pay increase from 2016 until now. I do not know another group of workers for whom that is the case. We are not against outsourcing, or the market, but we are against outsourcing done badly. That is an important point that the committee was keen to make. The contract allows the MoJ and the courts to distance themselves from the reality of what is happening on the ground.
In their responses, the Government said that suppliers are best placed to set rules, suppliers are the experts and suppliers have gone in for dynamic pricing. This is a public service. You can outsource and you can let the market guide you, but if you run a public service, you cannot abdicate your responsibility for making sure that it is universally good and delivering an excellent level of provision for every single person whose life it protects. That is why they cannot answer on pay and travel costs. We have had no response at all other than, “It is going to be left to the market, and we trust the provider”.
I just gently say to the Minister that I hope that, before that contract is signed, she has at least two assurances. An inflation increase has been guaranteed in the contract year on year but, despite our best efforts, we have no assurance that that increase will be paid to the translators as a salary increase. Be absolutely sure, before it is signed, that that is an agreement to pay a salary increase and not just to pay the successful contractor more.
I also want to know what the percentage of profit is on the contract compared to the amount going to running the service. I worry about dynamic pricing, which was a bit of a strange phrase until it started being used for pop concerts. My understanding of dynamic pricing is that somebody always loses. That is the nature of it. I want to know who the losers are in the dynamic pricing that the ministry is quite happy to use here.
This is important. The contract will go until 2030. Whatever is decided cannot be changed between now and the end of this decade. I very much hope that the Minister, given her background, what I know of her and that this is her first debate, will want to look at this contract again. I know that it is at the negotiation stage, but please do not sign it off as a job already done. Please seize it as an opportunity of perhaps doing something better. I am delighted to be able to move the Motion on this report and look forward to people’s contributions.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
I will not take many minutes to wind up—there is another debate to begin and we have heard a wide range of speeches from noble Lords with a whole range of experiences. I congratulate my noble friend on her inaugural speech as a Minister. She showed that her experience, and the fact that she still remembers it, is crucial and will stand her in good stead. She said she could remember with some trepidation—I forget the exact word she used—when things had gone wrong; if I have one word of advice, it would be to never forget that feeling, because the minute you do is the minute you stop trying to solve the problems.
The committee understands the complexity of this, the length of time that these problems have been in existence and that the court system has not been well funded by Governments of any party for far too long. So it is difficult, and we are grateful and appreciative of the progress that has been made. But this big contract is almost like a brick wall in front of us and, to be honest, I remain unconfident that some of the fundamental improvements will be made until we see the contract. I live in hope as far as that is concerned.
I will just respond very briefly to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett. I take seriously his criticism of the report; the irony is that we probably spent longer talking about it than is reflected in the report. It started with just the noble Lord, Lord Willis, speaking about it, and then we gradually realised that he had a bit of a good idea. Part way through, the Government published their road map on artificial intelligence, which we felt gave us a good hook to go forward with. Perhaps our committee did not reflect in the report our understanding of how crucial this is. It has got to happen, because it will happen whether or not the Ministry of Justice decides to take charge of it.
I thank everybody who has contributed, especially those who are not members of the committee. It shows huge commitment. I look forward to keeping in touch with the Minister and her department so that we can monitor further progress. I beg to move.