Interpreting Services in the Courts (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Burnett of Maldon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the committee en bloc for the important work that it has done in looking at this subject which, as has already been observed, is something of a Cinderella in the justice system. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for her overview and introduction to the work of the committee.

It is a particular pleasure to see the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, in her place on her first outing as Minister. She brings enormously wide experience of the criminal law, in particular from sitting in the busiest criminal court in London until, I think, the day before she was nominated for a peerage. I suspect that the noble Baroness has seen more interpreters in action in recent years than the rest of us put together. It is some years since I was in the position of seeing interpreters at first instance.

All who have sat in courts and tribunals will have a mixed experience of interpreters. Many are excellent, but some are less so. But now is not the time for war stories, which any judge or practitioner would be happy to share in slower times.

Interpreters are needed in many criminal cases, even for participants who understand and can speak in conversational English. It is vital for anyone involved in legal proceedings, whether they be criminal, family, civil or tribunals, to understand what is going on and, if they are giving evidence, for the court or tribunal to understand what they are saying. There is also a need for participants to be able to communicate with their lawyers if they do not speak English. Some family cases and, more widely, when necessary, other civil and tribunal cases are provided with interpreters at public expense, as are criminal cases, but one should not overlook the fact that very large volumes of interpretation services are secured privately by litigants’ solicitors on their behalf.

I of course welcome any steps taken to improve across the board the standards of interpretation in our courts. As has been observed, the range of languages that require interpretation grows and changes on a monthly and yearly basis. I also welcome the efforts suggested by the committee to improve the standing and treatment of interpreters. Like the committee, I am confident that the contractual provisions need careful attention.

I wish to focus for a minute or two on technology and interpretation. In June 2018, I gave a lecture to the British and Irish Legal Information Institute on technology and the courts. I mention it not to encourage any noble Lord to trouble to find it and read it, but in a throwaway couple of lines I suggested that, with the use of technology, within a very few years high-quality simultaneous translation would be available: both translation which produces a text and translation that would be vocalised by technology. I added that, at the time, 2018, we were in the technological equivalent of the steam age—others had described it as the stone age—and that things would improve. I soon learned of the proliferation of bodies representing the interests of interpreters. All of them got in touch very quickly to tell me how wrong I was and, had I been on any of their Christmas card lists, I fear I would have been struck off.

Now we are seven years on and I confess my mild disappointment at the relatively small amount of space given to this issue by the committee and again, if I may say so, the rather dismissive response from the Government on this aspect. The reality is that those who represent interpreters are likely to be lukewarm about technology being used for translation and interpretation and, as has already been alluded to, the legal profession is not renowned for embracing change. However, technology really has moved on. Voice recognition software is now pretty reliable. It is very different from the early days when I used it 10 or more years ago, trying to dictate judgments. I found that it took longer to correct them than it would have taken me to type them in the first instance.

Translation software is also now very reliable. Of course, it is not available for all languages—one has to recognise that—but it is available for many, and English is the ubiquitous language into which many other languages have to be translated across the world. Publicly available software is always available now to vocalise translatable text. Many courts around the world are using this technology now for translation and interpretation purposes, and others are thinking of introducing it imminently. I declare an interest as Chief Justice of the Astana International Financial Court.

So its day has come, or very soon will come. Computing power is doubling every six months at the moment. I urge the Government to look closely at what is going on around the world and make plans urgently to keep up. When they do, I suggest, in the light of bitter experience of the court reform programme, that they buy products off the shelf and do not seek to build them from scratch or indulge in overengineering. I see the Minister smiling because she has seen this at the coalface. If there is time, I would be grateful to have an indication of what is being planned by the Government to use technology for translation and interpretation.