Justice CommitteeWritten evidence from the Magistrates’ Association
Summary
Early in the summer, after implementation of the new service the Courts and Courts Practice Committee of the Magistrates’ Association requested and received feedback from our members on their experiences of how the new service was working in practice within the magistrates’ court system. Areas which responded represented a wide geographical spread across England and Wales and between rural areas and cities. If required full details of the comments received can be supplied to the Committee.
Our summary of the comments can be seen below and are therefore addressing point 3 in the terms of reference of the Select Committee:
“the experience of courts and prisons in receiving interpretation services that meet their needs.”
In general, most areas reported a variety of problems with the service particularly at the commencement of the contract. Two main difficulties were experienced: firstly mistakes in the organising or booking of interpreters ie, an interpreter of a language different to that booked arrived at court or the interpreter had to leave earlier than required. And secondly the location of interpreters, including problems with finding interpreters with experience of less common languages.
The other area of comment centred around the quality of the interpreter’s actual performance on the day. Comments were also made about issues raised in dealing with the service provider.
There was however a small minority of respondents who thought the service had improved with the new arrangements but this represented only about 10% of all comments received: although as some two thirds of all areas did not respond this satisfaction level may be much higher.
Since these early days it has become apparent that considerable efforts and resources have been applied to remedy the many problems described below. The level of comments has diminished although complaints are still received by the Association especially about the standards of interpreters. It would appear therefore that the level of service is slowly returning to that experienced before the new contract commenced.
1. Organising/Booking of Interpreters
This was probably the most common subject of complaints from our members. Specific issues were:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
2. Location of Interpreters
There were several problems experienced on the day which meant that new interpreters had to be sent from another area, including:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
3. Performance of Interpreters
There were many problems reported about performance, including the quality of the interpreter’s language skills, organisational abilities, and knowledge of the legal process. Specifically, problems reported were:
(i)
(ii)
One respondent commented that the interpreters “don’t seem to know what’s required ie if client speaks a little English [they] just sit and listen rather than interpreting’ and an experience was reported that: “it became apparent that the interpreter was answering the questions before having translated them for the witness.”
Some interpreters offer several languages and this may suggest the interpreter was not as skilled in interpreting nuance in each language.
The issue was also raised of how carefully the quality of the interpreters is checked; and
(iii)
4. Issues in dealing with service provider
There were a number of problems experienced initially with the service provider, namely:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
5. Other Issues
Various other comments of interest were received:
(i)
(ii)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
August 2012