Public Accounts CommitteeWritten evidence from Jan Cambridge

The missing component of the otherwise excellent discussion at the Public Accounts Select Committee meeting at 3.15 on 15 October was independence. Interpreters cannot afford to work for a monolithic organisation with a national monopoly. People made doubly vulnerable by reason of engagement with the CJS or illness, coupled with a lack of English, often bring with them good reason not to trust uniformed services. Interpreters’ impartiality must be perceived and believed by both our clients. An all encompassing body which knows very little about interpreting, such as ALS/Capita, is never going to be the answer.

In spite of all that MoJ staff said today, there is a complete framework for developing the new profession of public service interpreting—just not with a huge company. It was very clear that the MoJ team were and are “flying blind” as well as flying deaf. The structure of the profession relies for credibility and success on the separation of powers. The structure attempted removes that. The Chartered Institute of Linguists has an international membership and international recognition, as does the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. Both provide professional bona fides, CPD training, qualifications and professional support. The Institute of Linguists Educational Trust is an Ofqual accredited awarding body, and provides specific professional examinations for linguists, including the DPSI. The National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI), the national regulator called for by Lord Runciman and established in 1994, has been fully independent since April last year. It is worth noting that none of the “failures” of NRPSI mentioned at today’s committee hearing was due to its failure to discipline an interpreter. It was disappointing that nobody asked if there had been an official complaint made in any of those cases. NRPSI is not statutory and cannot instigate disciplinary proceedings against an interpreter simply on the basis of press reports or unsubstantiated hearsay. We still pay £198 annual registration fee, to register or renew our registration in a single language pair. The NAO would do well to look at NRPSI regulations, processes and criteria for registration as well as its disciplinary framework as a comparator with what ALS/Capita propose to provide. Comparing the ALS/Capita Code of Conduct to the ethical codes of CIOL, ITI and NRPSI would also be useful. The quality of interpreting is not apparent to monolingual people looking on, that is exactly why interpreters should truly be professionals, not just in court but across the public sector. “Barefoot” interpreters are a risk factor in justice, medicine and every other public service. There is a correlation between the quality of a person’s spoken L2 (second language) comprehension and the quality of their own L2 speech. The list Capita uses as criteria for registration with them is exactly the same as the list of criteria for registration that NRPSI uses and is, like the rest of their structure, copied from NRPSI. The “tiers” system is not used by NRPSI.

There is a trade union, NUPIT. These organisations are national, inclusive and overarching; you are no doubt familiar with the specialist associations in the specific field of Court work. There is a significant body of academic research into interpreting process and product. Some of this is interpreter-practitioner research, much is by professional researchers and practitioners of collaborating professions. Education and training provided by universities is developing. The functions being handed over to ALS/Capita were already developed and operating, but without the government support for them to grow. To hand the education and training, assessment and regulation of interpreters to a company that pays peanuts to interpreters while they know that the shareholders are profiting from them destroys any possibility of Profession and will de-claw trades union representation.

There are other areas of the public services which many of the people engaging with our legal system also inhabit: medicine, education, local government and social services for example. Public Service Interpreting should not be seen as a set of separate systems but a general underpinning in which multi-qualified linguists can serve the whole sector. If you were looking for an interpreter to attend at someone’s home when a non-English speaker is detained under the terms of the Mental Health Act, which specialist interpreter would you book? This process involves psychiatric assessment, police officers serving a warrant, social services and probably a solicitor. How many interpreters should that occupy? Where would you look for one? They should all be represented on a single national regulator’s list, for coherence of service. People do not live their lives in compartments. The core elements of interpreting are the same, just as they are in medicine and the law. Specialisation comes after that. Costs, standards, and safety can all be beneficially influenced by an overall national policy based on not-for-profit enterprise and bona fide FE training centres.

The hub-and-spokes system mentioned by one of your panel was mooted with the MoJ by CIOL and other professional groups in about 2004, based on local not-for-profit organisations that, in their local areas:

identify local language needs; source, train, test and register successful candidates on the NRPSI;

know and liaise closely with local community groups, and public service providers;

run rolling training programmes for public service staff in understanding the professional needs of interpreters and working with them effectively;

run rolling CPD training for their panel of interpreters;

offer emotional support for interpreters after difficult work assignments, as their freelance status and commitment to confidentiality means they cannot confide elsewhere;

provide language use statistics to public service suppliers using their service; and

act as the call centre for their region, deploying detailed local knowledge of the languages, communities and cultures they serve.

The hub would collect national statistics on use, pay and conditions; keep data on speakers of rare languages so that they can be engaged outside their region quickly; undertake PR and outreach functions. This would provide a single one-stop-shop for all the public services and service users looking for interpreters, nationally and across the sector.

I hope these ideas may take root. This “car crash” has shown that there is much to talk about and integrate into a coherent national service on the basis of freelance professionals. All interpreters need the same core education and training, as do all doctors, lawyers and social workers. Specialist training needs to come into play after that. If public service interpreting were a national service, across the sector, fully supported by the relevant Departments, there are many savings that could be made. £43 million would probably cover the cost—but I expect that’s a joined-up wish too far.

16 October 2012