Public Accounts CommitteeWritten evidence from Dr Francis Beresford
I am writing with respect to your forthcoming investigation of the Ministry of Justice’s language services contract (the Contract). I am the husband of an experienced court interpreter and have taken a close interest in the Contract since it began.
The history of Public Service Interpreting in the Justice System in England & Wales is probably not an area that is familiar to many of you but it is of considerable relevance in considering the effectiveness of the Ministry of Justice’s language services contract.
Following a tragic death related to inaccurate court interpreting the Runciman Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm22/2263/2263.pdf ) recommended in 1993 (Ch8, p130, para48–51) that only trained and qualified interpreters be used in court. In response the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) was established in 1994 along with a qualifying exam, the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (DPSI). In 1998 the Trials Issues Group (http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/interpret.pdf ) recommended the exclusive use of National Register Interpreters when selecting interpreters for criminal investigations and court proceedings. This was confirmed by Lord Justice Auld’s Report in 2001 ( ), which also recommended (Ch 11, para 159, p 586): “there should be a review of the levels of payment to interpreters with a view to encouraging more and the best qualified to undertake this work and to establishing a national scale of pay”.
These reports effectively created two tiers of interpreters in this country: those with the linguistic and academic ability to study and master the interpreting of complex legal discourse, who could therefore pass the demanding DPSI; and those who could not. The latter tended to do medical or other less demanding interpreting work at a much lower rate of pay. Even under the National Agreement the annual income of DPSI interpreters, other than for a few languages, was lower than most linguists could earn doing commercial translation and much lower than for conference interpreting. Linguists therefore mostly chose this work as they enjoyed doing it and for the sense of service that it gave.
The major appeal of the Contract is that it is estimated it will give a reduction of around 30% on previous interpreter costs. These estimates do not include any savings in administration costs and so they must, along with the agency’s fees, come from reduced interpreter pay. The reduction in interpreter pay is therefore in reality considerably greater than the 8% initially modelled in the recent National Audit Office (NAO) Report. Depending on the amount of travel and length of assignment, it is in fact around 30–70% for courts and 30–45% for tribunals. These figures help to explain the otherwise puzzling fact that only 13% of NRPSI interpreters have signed up with ALS/Capita. They also make it clear that, by removing the DPSI as a requirement for most court interpreting and dramatically reducing levels of pay, the Contract has saved money by simply downgrading the standard of legal interpreting. Only around 300 of 1500 interpreters employed by ALS/Capita are on the NRPSI and so the Ministry is now mostly using untrained and low skilled interpreters who are willing to work for a concomitantly lower rate of pay. Unfortunately this has also reversed the recommendations of the three previous reports into interpreting in the Justice System and puts back standards of justice for non-English speakers by 20 years.
The large decrease in the level of remuneration also means that the current FWA will never attract the skilled linguists that the previous official reports recognized the Justice sector requires. This is graphically illustrated by the fact that 87% of NRPSI interpreters have not signed up with ALS/Capita. It is also likely that many of the NRPSI interpreters currently working for Capita/ALS will gradually move into better paid work elsewhere.
When Richard Mason, Head of the Better Trials Unit, concluded his investigation into revising interpreter services he was looking for savings of “at least 10%” (email to Interpreters on 30.3.11) which was challenging but not unreasonable. It was only after talking to ALS that the MoJ became seduced by the idea of making much larger savings of around 30% (18m on a 60m spend) and failed to see that ALS could only achieve this by a radical downgrading of the service. When you compare interpreters who have degrees and post-graduate qualifications to other trained self-employed workers who travel to assignments, even home appliance repair men, it is clear that trained interpreters are not overpaid for what they do even at the rates of the previous National Agreement. This is not to say that savings could not be made, particularly in respect of assignments that can be guaranteed to last less than three hours.
It is also apparent from the NAO report that the new “assessment” is quite inadequate as a test of a legal interpreter’s ability and the NAO report notes that the Ministry of Justice is already trying to find an alternative. This somehow forgets that there is already an excellent assessment, the DPSI, designed to find interpreters of the required standard, available in many different languages and, most importantly, of proven pedigree. There is also a less comprehensive test, the Met test which, although originally only designed for police work, at present provides a less demanding route onto the NRPSI which is again available in many languages. Trying to devise an alternative test to these would be time-consuming, expensive and ultimately pointless.
I hope this gives you some extra useful information on the likely effectiveness of the Ministry of Justice’s language services contract.
8 October 2012