Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to ensure the adequacy of services provided by interpreters to her Department.

The Ministry of Justice operates a robust performance and quality regime for these services. Interpreter fulfilment of bookings is the service provided by suppliers under contract, and their performance is managed through contract management. The quality regime includes ensuring that interpreters on the Ministry of Justice register are qualified and security vetted, a rolling programme of spot checks on interpreters to ensure that they are meeting the quality requirements, and a complaints process that will direct quality assessment checks to interpreters that are subject to a complaint.

The suppliers forecast demand, and work to ensure that there is a pool of qualified interpreters available to the Ministry of Justice to fulfil our bookings.