Public Accounts CommitteeWritten evidence from HM Courts and Tribunal Service

Following the hearing on 15 October, the Department undertook to provide a note in response to several issues raised by the Committee.

Among those issues were examples of anecdotal evidence for which we requested more detail before we could respond fully to the Committee’s concerns. Those examples, taken from the uncorrected transcript we received on 16 October, can be found at Annex A.

In addition to seeking clarification on certain points, I understand that witnesses from Capita will not now be appearing before the Committee until 29 October. I would be grateful if, in these special circumstances, you would agree to an extension to your deadline for written evidence from the Department of one week, from 24 October to 31 October.

I am copying this letter to the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Treasury Officer of Accounts, the MoJ Parliamentary Clerk and will write again with our full response in due course.

Annex A

(EXTRACTS TAKEN FROM THE UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF THE PAC HEARING,
DATED 15 OCTOBER)

In order to respond fully to the concerns of the Committee, I would be most grateful if the Committee could provide me with greater detail on three pieces of anecdotal evidence referred to in Monday afternoon’s PAC hearing:

1. 0142 Chair: Mr Jones, to take it at its most ridiculous, I understand that the owner of a cat registered him as a feline language specialist as a joke, and was then asked by ALS to bring the pet in for a language test.

2. 0143 Chair: But that is a registered number. What is really disturbing-we have been given a long dossier-is a case not from December but from 17 July 2012: “After reading about Jajo the rabbit I decided to register with ALS. I had no intention of working for them. I only wanted to see how far I could go and how incompetent ALS is. So I registered with a fake name (the name of a fictional character)”—this is the end of July—“a fake address (a well-known official residence of a head of state), a mobile number with only 10 digits and an obviously fake Skype name. No qualifications, no experience, no security vetting. Two days after I registered I got my first job offer, a 45 minute job at a court in central London. Soon after that I received an email inviting me to take the assessment test. I did not reply, but I carried on receiving job offers. In total, up to now, I have received 12 job offers.”

Martin Jones: I have looked at a number of allegations of this kind and I have fed those through to ALS to investigate for us. On a number of those, they cannot find that interpreter on their system. Obviously, once I have the details of that one, I will ask the question again and perhaps write back to the Committee.

3. 0219 Chair: In this dossier of evidence, there are a number of cases and I will pick out one: Stoke-an-Trent tribunal. I have deliberately gone for later months. Again, this is 16 August, which is seven months into the contract. No interpreter attended and the judge went ahead without hearing evidence from the witnesses. Is that a good way of carrying out justice? Are you happy with that?

Peter Handcock: We would have to be happy with the judgment that the judge made on the day. There are clearly some processes that could be transacted without.

0223 Chair: Well, there are a couple of such cases. Will you write to the Stoke-an-Trent A1 tribunal-the hearing was on 16 August-to find out why he decided to go ahead and let us know his response?

Peter Handcock: Of course.

Peter Handcock CBE
Chief Executive

19 October 2012