81% of court interpreters boycott Capita register

A survey commissioned by umbrella group Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) has revealed that four in five interpreters (81%) are still refusing to join the private register operated by Capita for interpreting jobs in courts and other parts of the justice system, even though the contract has been in operation for over one year.

The group will now share the new survey findings with Justice Minister Helen Grant MP (I bet she ignores them! Ed.) as she considers her response to the recent Justice Committee report (6th February), which described the Ministry’s handling of the court interpreting contract as ‘nothing short of shambolic’ and said it ‘failed to heed warnings from the professionals concerned’ (posts passim).

Meanwhile Michael Turner QC, the Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, speaking in an interview with BBC 3 Counties Radio, said the contract with Capita is ‘a con on the taxpayer and a con on the victims of crime’.

A succession of six-monthly online surveys since August 2011 have consistently shown 80%-90% of qualified and experienced freelance interpreters refusing to work under the new system because professional standards have been lowered by the private contractor and the interests of justice are not being served.

Madeleine Lee of the Professional Interpreters Alliance, one of 10 organisations comprising Professional Interpreters for Justice, said: “We can’t call a strike because we are freelancers. Nonetheless the strength of feelings has been borne out and the majority are not willing to work for Capita. It’s very clear that after one year it’s not simply a matter of pay, it’s a matter of principles, standards and quality – we don’t want to be lumped in with others who are not as qualified as we are”.

A total of 859 interpreters completed the online survey between 29 January and 10 February 2013 with the results showing that the calls to review the Framework Agreement and the Capita contract are still supported by the majority of those in the profession.

Keith Moffitt, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, also part of PI4J, said: “The survey findings are strong evidence for the Ministry of Justice that interpreters cannot be persuaded to work under the Framework Agreement or the Capita contract. The dissatisfaction of interpreters who haven’t registered to work was echoed by those who have in fact signed up for jobs with Capita TI, who said they were not happy with the pay and conditions offered and felt mistreated.”

58% of those refusing to register with Capita stated they have been telephoned directly by Court clerks in the last 3 months with urgent requests for them to attend court because Capita has let them down.

Geoffrey Buckingham, Chair of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters (ACPI), said: “We will be discussing with the Justice Minister that there have not been the marked improvements to the service which she believes are happening. How can there be when over half of the respondents to our survey who refuse to sign up with Capita say they are being contacted by courts desperate to get them to work? There have been continual breaches and no published statistics by the Ministry of Justice since August 2012. Those which were published last year are unaudited. The surveys we have commissioned are the only insights into what is happening and how interpreters feel and any attempts to persuade them to work under the Framework Agreement are bound to fail”.

The Ministry of Justice has been repeatedly criticised, most recently by the Justice Committee, for signing a four year Framework Agreement for language services with Applied Language Solutions (ALS) which was acquired by Capita in December 2011 and now operates as Capita Translation and Interpreting.

Incidences of interpreter ‘no-shows’ and poor quality interpreting at courts and police stations across the UK are still being reported at an alarming rate. For example, on 7th February at Snaresbrook Crown Court a case collapsed due to disputed interpreting by a Sylheti (Bangladeshi) linguist, resulting in Judge Joana Korner CMG QC specifically instructing the Crown Prosecution Service not to “hire any interpreters in future who are not on the National Register”.

Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) have rejected Justice Minister Helen Grant MP’s publicly stated figures on the performance of Capita TI. On 16 January, in a written answer to Shadow Justice Minister Sadiq Khan, she said there was an “increasing improvement in service to 93.5% performance by August 2012” (I think I smell burning knickers. Ed.).