Crown Court Criminal Case Backlog

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, the failure to use professional qualified interpreters in our courts often results in cases being adjourned. This adds to the backlog, not to mention the costs.

I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. I warmly welcome this week’s publication by the MoJ of the review of qualifications and experience required by public service interpreters. I thank the Government for accepting all its recommendations.

During the Covid lockdown there was a major shift towards remote court hearings, but a series of reports found serious concerns about remote interpreting, with misunderstandings, delays, poorly performing technology, and missed verbal and non-verbal cues. The University of Surrey’s Centre for Translation Studies has produced cutting-edge research on the use of technology in court interpreting. This research and best practice guidance have been provided to the MoJ. Can the Minister say whether these have been distributed to the courts? There will always be certain situations where remote interpreting is appropriate or unavoidable. Remote interpreting generally takes more time and slows things down, so if the primary driver is cost saving then the impact on court time and, therefore, backlog clearing must be factored in when weighing up the imagined savings versus true costs.

The other strategy which might well backfire and cause greater delays is the uncontrolled use of AI-enabled machine translation, rather than a qualified human being. Accuracy must be non-negotiable but, according to the CIOL, for interpreting—as opposed to translation —it is very unlikely in the near term that AI or machine translation will be usable as anything other than a support tool for human interpreters without major risks and the likelihood of appeals and legal challenges. It works pretty well for the standard European Romance languages and for German, but significantly less so for languages with many dialects, such as Arabic. It can be nearly useless for languages which are rarely included in AI training data, including many Asian and African languages.

Given this disparity, it would be almost impossible for the courts to maintain equality of treatment before the law. AI and machine translation commonly fail to detect sarcasm, irony or humour, not to mention slang and euphemisms—often used in crime to disguise meaning —which human interpreters readily understand but which leave AI befuddled and hallucinating. Is the MoJ fully engaged with DSIT in its work to develop policy on AI, including for machine translation, so that the courts can derive the benefits without the pitfalls? Can the Minister also reassure the House that the amendments to the victims’ code to ensure the use of only professional qualified translators and interpreters, which he supported so strongly in opposition, will be brought into practice without any further delay?