Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Bishop of Leeds

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to be present at Second Reading—the day job had to take precedence. I rise to endorse thoroughly what the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said in her speech. I wish not to speak to each amendment but to add a bit of heft to what she said. I do not exactly declare this as an interest, but I was a professional linguist before I went into the Church, so language has been important to me right the way through.

We heard in the Minister’s response earlier that victims must get the information they need. They also must get it in a form they are able to read, or hear, and understand. In this country language is often misunderstood or not taken as seriously as it ought to be, or as one might find in some countries in continental Europe, for example, where you live on boundaries and have to operate in a number of languages. Because we are an island nation, this is something we do not necessarily experience.

Having trained as a translator and interpreter—these are very different skills and professions—I understand the problems of inaccuracy and of getting even nuance wrong. We are talking here about victims who are already seriously disadvantaged. That disadvantage, that damage, should not be exacerbated by running the risk of them simply not being able to be understood, or to understand what is being represented to them.

There is something here about professionalism. If noble Lords do not believe that this is important, I hope they watched the funeral of Nelson Mandela, where the deaf interpreter simply went awry—it looked like he was conducting an orchestra, but badly. He said afterwards that he was simply overawed by the experience, but many people doubted that he had the skill to do what he had been signed up and paid to do. It really matters. I found it very entertaining but not very edifying, so I emphasise the need for professionalism in this.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred to Google Translate, which most linguists go to for a bit of a laugh and to see what it suggests. When I lecture in German at German universities, I often run my texts through it for the entertainment value, but it is rarely accurate. Now we have translation by AI systems—Google Translate is that, really—which can be entertaining too. They can be helpful if you need a bit of a boost, but you would not rely on them for something that was important for life and death.

That is why the national register is so important. My understanding is that this country has a shortage of not only linguists—I could say much more about that—but qualified linguists able to go on the register and do what we are asking them to do. That triggers a different question. We cannot just say that we do not have the qualified people and therefore must make do; we have a bigger challenge to emphasise the importance of language learning, which has many knock-on effects for how we understand people and culture. As I often repeat, the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, when giving advice to younger Germans asking him about going into politics, wrote: “Don’t even consider it unless you have at least two foreign languages to a competent degree, because you can’t understand yourself and your own culture unless you look through the lens of another. For that you need language, because language goes deep”. Some things cannot be translated; you need a degree of expertise to deal with them.

There is a wider issue, but I will not bang that drum any further now. This is fundamentally a matter of justice. If victims are to be heard and to hear accurately, this ought to be in the Bill.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for bringing forward this amendment. When I spoke at Second Reading, I did not realise that this dimension might arise—clearly it can, and it is important. I address the Committee as one of a small minority here who do not have English as their first language. In fact, I calculated over the Easter Recess that I speak in English less than 10% of the time. This Bill will impact not just England but Wales, where Welsh is an official language. I do not see much evidence in the Bill of any adjustment being made for that purpose.

Fundamentally, the Bill deals with victims. There are perhaps four groups of victims for whom the language dimension is critical. First, there are children; at home in Wales, a large number of children—certainly tens of thousands—have Welsh as their first language. They acquire English as a second language as they get older, but under pressure they will no doubt want to revert to their first language, which is the natural language in which they express themselves. Another group of great importance to me and a number of other noble Lords is disabled people. When put under stress, they need assistance. If there is additional stress from dealing in a language that is not their first, they will need assistance.

That is also true for elderly people. As people get older, they revert to their first language, particularly those who have had strokes. People from Wales have found themselves in residential homes in the south of England; the staff think they are speaking gibberish, but they are reverting to their first language. That group also needs to be brought in. Finally, there is the general group of people who are under stress, whatever their age or background, and need to be helped to express themselves in their first language. This is important in Wales. Reference was made a moment ago to the Children’s Commissioner. We have our own Children’s Commissioner for Wales and our own framework, but I am not sure that the Bill takes that on board. Clearly, provision needs to be made.

The day has now passed when an ad hoc translator would be whistled up for a court case from those who happened to be around—usually a minister or a teacher, who could roughly translate what was being said. I have mentioned before in this House how many people over the centuries—although not in this or the last—were hanged without understanding a word of what was going on in the court that declared them guilty.