Data released by the Ministry of Justice show that the controversial and much-criticised contract for the provision of translating and interpretation services to courts and tribunals is still not operating to its required target.
The Statistical Bulletin, issued by the MoJ on 18 October, covers the period from 30 January, when the contract with Applied Language Services – now Capita Translation and Interpreting – began, to 31 August. During that period the company was to have taken over all translation and interpreting services, but the MoJ later allowed courts to appoint expert interpreters independently following the initial problems with the contract.
The Bulletin gives the rate of ‘success’ for requests from different sources for a number of languages, broken down by month.
According to the official statement: “During the period covered by this bulletin…there were 72,043 completed requests for language services covering 163 different languages. Of these requests, 53.4% were for criminal cases (including Crown and magistrates’ courts cases, and requests made by prisons), 38.5% were for tribunal cases (including immigration and asylum), and the remaining 8.1% were for civil or family cases.”
Over the whole period the MoJ claims a ‘success rate’ of 89%. According to the Ministry of Justice, however, that figure does not represent the whole picture.
“Presenting a single success figure hides a very marked trend over the seven months of increasing success rates for requests for languages translation services. In the first month of the contract, the success rate was 66.5% of all requests, increasing to 95.3% by August 2012.” That compares to a target quoted by the Law Society Gazette of 98%.
Perhaps more revealing is the number of complaints. Of the 3,937 complaints recorded, 2,256 (57.3%) were from tribunals, with the most common reason for complaint being that the interpreter was late getting to the assignment. At criminal courts and prisons, the most common reason for complaint, according to the Bulletin, was that there was no interpreter available. That accounted for 34.6% of complaints from those sources. What is not revealed is the number of times an interpreter was not available at court.
These latest figures have been published just days after it was revealed that senior procurement officials had ignored a report by consultants warning of the risks of implementing the contract in the first place.
The revelation emerged during a hearing by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee into the issue.
According to a report in the Law Society Gazette, three senior officials, including head of procurement Ann Beasley, admitted that they had not read the report from a financial data company, which advised them not to do business worth more than £1m with the contractor.
The chair of the committee, Margaret Hodge MP, reportedly described the admission as “shocking evidence” and said the three had ignored a “very obvious and basic bit of due diligence”.