Politics

The letter below, originally posted on RPSI Linguist Lounge, has been sent to Helen Grant MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, in response to the recent announcement of an increase in the remuneration for linguists employed under the MoJ’s contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim), an increase which will be borne by the taxpayer, not the contractor.

Dear Helen Grant,

I would like to congratulate you on increasing ‘the take-home pay of interpreters’. But this isn’t going to really change anything at all for interpreters in providing a better service as this increase is VERY minimal, as this still doesn’t fully cover the travel expenses of getting to a job location. There are very few of us who can afford to work full-time as a public service interpreter with the possibility of only earning £13.32 in a day (before tax). The calculations show that Capita does not even guarantee a rate equal to the minimum wage and at best the gross hourly rate for half a day at court has been reduced by 57.85% (even at the previous enhanced mileage rate of 40 [pence] per mile).

So what NEEDS to happen is: Tier 1 Police interpreting jobs need to be paid a premium of about £30 per hour with FULL travel expenses covered, door to door travel mileage at a rate of £0.40 per mile and full travel time of £10 an hour, to ensure interpreters/translators accept the assignment and arrive at the immediate police job as soon as possible, as most Police jobs are emergencies and are needed very quickly, otherwise the ‘criminal’ will have to either stay in custody till a interpreter arrives (which could take days, with the low pay for interpreters) OR they can just be freed on bail back on to the streets, so they can re-offend and make the streets even less safe.

Also the mileage rate needs to become £0.40 per mile across the board; so Tier 1, 2 and 3 because as I said the current £0.20 rate is just horrendous, making it not even viable to even head out to go to a job assignment because the interpreters will still be making a loss at the end of the day!

If you listen to what I am trying to say, you will find out that this will, in essence, bring the full qualified interpreters back to the court room and make justice possible!

How can you do this to interpreters which have trained for many years to get to where they’re to then be paid a minimum wage?! No wonder they’ve boycotted Capita! They deserve to be paid a way more than what is currently being paid. So when the rates eventually rise, then we shall see very positive work from Interpreters and Translators. But hopefully you will fix this issue because at the end of the day, this just isn’t fair on the interpreters, translators, solicitors, barristers and judges.

I hope to see a reply from you.

Kind Regards

The Ipswich Star reports today that interpreter is under investigation following the collapse of a trial, in which she was said to have coached a victim of alleged grievous bodily harm while he was giving his evidence in a case at Ipswich Crown Court.

The trial was in its third day when Recorder Peter Wallis discharged the jury, stating that the interpreter was not reliable.

One of the 3 defendants in the dock clearly heard the Tamil interpreter from 25 feet as witness Niruban Amirthalingham was about to resume his testimony.

The female interpreter could now face possible charges of contempt of court or perverting the course of justice.

The incident took place after the trial resumed after lunch on Tuesday.

Some 5-10 minutes into the cross-examination of Mr. Amirthalingham by Matthew Jewell, representing defendant Karunanidhy Nallathamby – one of 3 defendants in the case – the barrister’s attention was drawn to his client wishing to speak to him.

Mr. Jewell subsequently asked for an adjournment, requesting that the jury, witness and interpreter leave the court.

The barrister then told Recorder Wallis his client had heard the interpreter tell Mr. Amirthalingham in Tamil before the jury returned to court: “If you get a chance tell them they snatched the bar from you.”

The Crown brought its own interpreter to court yesterday (Thursday) to verify what was being alleged by Mr. Nallathamby.

Mr. Jewell pointed out the court did not know if any other exchanges had previous taken place between the the interpreter and the witness.

Recorder Wallis remarked that on the face of things the interpreter’s action it was not merely contempt of court and could constitute a case of perverting the course of justice.

Crown Court trials are believed to cost at least £3,000 a day, so this trial had already cost the public purse £9,000 before collapsing due to an unprofessional interpreter.

The evidence continues to stack up that Capita Translation & Interpreting just cannot fulfil the contract it has with the Ministry of Justice for the provision of interpreting services for courts and tribunals.

On Wednesday last week, This is Wiltshire reported on a trial at Swindon Crown Court for grievous bodily harm which had to be adjourned due to the non-appearance of an interpreter.

A 27 year-old Pole resident in Staverton left a man needing surgery on a fractured eye socket after an assault in a bar in Swindon in November last year.

Although the defendant pleaded guilty, sentencing has been adjourned on Tuesday by Recorder Michael Selfe until an interpreter can attend as the defendant does not speak good enough English to understand court proceedings.

The defendant was released on bail.

Courts really should start recouping the costs of delays to cases and the additional expenses incurred from Capita T&I.

Reading through the MoJ‘s response to the Justice Select Committee report, there are so many points that have to be challenged and demolished that it’s difficult to know where to start, but let’s begin with the proposed changes to linguist payments. It should not be forgotten that when National Audit Office, Public Accounts Committee and Justice Select Committee were investigating the FWA, Capita was paying 40p/mile and a £5 supplement for online booking, since then Capita cut the rate to 20p/mile and scrapped the supplement. If Helen Grant considers the proposed enhancements as a step forward, they come after Capita has already taken 2 steps backwards.

1. Paying 20p/mile for the first 10 miles of each leg of a journey. That’s worth £4, but is still small change compared to what Capita linguists lost when the mileage rate was cut from 40p/mile.

2. Tier 1 linguists to be paid £22/hour for Tier 2 assignments, so that’s an extra £2/hour, but let’s not forget withdrawal of the £5 online booking supplement.

3. Payment for 15 minute blocks. On average, this would mean being paid for an extra 7 minutes per assignment, or £2.56 per assignment. See 2 above.

4. Cancellation fees. It remains to be seen what the cancellation fee is going to be, and how short the notice has to be before it becomes payable. I wonder if this will coincide with Capita introducing a cancellation penalty on linguists that cancel their booking at short notice.

5. Daily fee to help cover incidental costs that a linguist may occur. Note the use of the phrase ‘help to cover’, rather than ‘to cover’. It remains to be seen how much this fee is going to be. Maybe on arrival at court, the booking clerk will give each linguist £1 to help cover the cost of a cup of tea and a packet of crisps*.

It would be interesting to know how these are intended to be paid to linguists. It would only make sense for these to be paid through Capita, otherwise it completely undermines the benefit of only dealing with one supplier. This can only mean that MoJ is going to increase the rates it pays to Capita in order to cover the cost of these enhanced payments. Given that what Capita charges now is commercially sensitive and therefore not revealed by MoJ (though everyone has figured out what it is) will the MoJ be disclosing how much extra it intends to pay Capita?

Could this be the Trojan horse the MoJ is looking for to funnel extra cash into Capita’s pockets so that they can start to recoup their losses and make profits instead? After all, isn’t that the whole point of outsourcing? Whenever public money is being spent, shouldn’t our chums in big business be given the opportunity to line their pockets with taxpayer’s money?

Reposted – with a few links and tags added – from Linguist Lounge. Read the original.

* = Shouldn’t that be peanuts? Ed.

The Ministry of Justice seems to think that justice is something that comes at a price, not something that has an intrinsic non-pecuniary value. Ever since the coalition government got its foot in the door of the MoJ in Petty France, their primary concern seems to have been to save money, not to ensure that justice – that nebulous, non-quantifiable concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, equity or fairness, as well as the administration of the law – is administered fairly and equitably.

It started with interpreting services for courts and tribunals (posts passim), a topic this blog has been monitoring closely for many months.

That saga began with then Justice Minister Crispin Blunt erroneously describing court interpreters as ‘grossly overpaid‘ and ‘taking advantage of the system’ as justification for handing the whole lot over to the consistently under-performing Capita/ALS. What started as a scheme intended to save £18 mn. a year out of an annual budget of £60 mn. is having the opposite effect as justice is denied, delayed or provided at increased cost to the public purse as trials are delayed due to underqualified or unqualified interpreters being provided, interpreters not turning up at all and defendants being remanded in custody.

The ministers and mandarins at the MoJ will of course deny that this is the situation (and probably couldn’t care less about it either. Ed.), despite courts interpreting service provided by Capita being condemned by two House of Commons Select Committees – the Public Accounts Committee and the Justice Committee.

In its latest daft idea to try and save money, the MoJ is turning its attention to ‘reforming’ (i.e. cutting. Ed.) legal aid for criminal cases.

A report in Sunday’s Express states that more than 1,500 High Street solicitors will be forced to close branches “within a year” if the Government’s – i.e. the MoJ’s – controversial legal aid reform plans succeed.

This latest money-saving MoJ wheeze is being piloted by Justice Minister Chris Grayling and is intended to save £220 mn. from the £2 bn. legal aid bill. Lawyers and MPs are warning that these measures would transform Britain’s legal system from one of the world’s most respected to that of a “banana republic”.

Some 1,600 local solicitors firms offer legal aid for criminal cases. Under Grayling’s proposals this figure would be slashed to 400, with contracts for criminal work tendered for the lowest bid going to bulk providers like supermarket giant Tesco, Olympics fiasco security firm G4S and the haulier Eddie Stobart, whose primary businesses aren’t in any way connected with the provision of legal advice (would you engage a plumber to fix a leaking roof? Ed.).

Under Grayling’s plans, defendants who cannot afford to pay for advocates will no be able longer choose their own legal aid provider but will be assigned one. That legal aid provider will be paid one fee for the case regardless of the advocate’s performance and whether or not a client pleads guilty.

This will remove a fundamental right from defendants in criminal trials – the right to choose a legal representative of one’s choice.

Furthermore, Michael Turner QC, head of the 4,000 strong Criminal Bar Association, has warned: “Our barristers’ system will fail. Our brilliant judiciary comes from the Bar. Once you have Tesco and G4S providing advocates, you will get Tesco and G4S judges in 10 years’ time. Make no bones about it, we are facing absolute devastation to what is the finest legal system in the world.”

A barrister of my acquaintance has described this as “killing the criminal bar,” adding, “Soon we will have wholly state-appointed defence lawyers and a guarantor of British liberty will die.”

If one takes the MoJ’s track record as shown by courts and tribunals interpreting, the result will prove to be disastrous and another breeding ground for miscarriages of justice.

Needless to say, there’s a petition against the MoJ’s plans. The petition’s text is reproduced below.

Save UK Justice

Responsible department: Ministry of Justice

The MoJ should not proceed with their plans to reduce access to justice by depriving citizens of legal aid or the right to representation by the Solicitor of their choice.

It’s time the MoJ looked at the big picture, not just the bottom line of the financial statements.