Outsourcing and privatisation disaster outfit

The long-awaited report from the Justice Committee, a House of Commons select committee, has now been published. The committee’s inquiry found that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) pushed ahead with outsourcing court interpreter services despite warnings that the quality of court language services would be reduced.

Evidence presented to the committee strongly suggests that the MoJ did not have a sufficient understanding of the complexities of court interpreting work. Prior to the award of the court interpreting contract to Applied Language Solutions (ALS) the MoJ’s consultation revealed significant concern that quality standards could be reduced by the imposition of a tiered system to enable a wider pool of interpreters and by the introduction of lower pay levels. However, the MoJ pushed ahead with the contract and failed to anticipate or address the potential for problems with ALS’ capacity to deliver what it promised.

When Capita acquired ALS for £7.5m in December 2011 and began providing interpreting and translation services to HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) in January 2012, it faced immediate operational difficulties. ALS/Capita have been unable to recruit enough qualified and experienced interpreters, resulting in availability and quality reductions in court and tribunal interpreting services.

The situation has been exacerbated due to a widespread boycott of the new arrangements by professional interpreters. Capita/ALS clearly needed significantly more resources than it had to provide the service to the required standard. The company also paid lip service to the regulatory duties accepted under the framework agreement with the MoJ, but did not have the capacity to cope with complaints or to implement basic vetting procedures.

According to the committee, the most important priority is for the MoJ and Capita to prove that the framework agreement is capable of attracting, retaining and deploying an adequate number of qualified and competent interpreters to meet the requirements of the courts and tribunals.

The Committee has also condemned actions taken by MoJ which had hampered its inquiry. HMCTS issued an edict to its staff instructing them not to participate in the Committee’s online consultation, established to invite direct observations from front-line staff of the performance of ALS. The committee considers that the ministry’s actions may have constituted a contempt of the House, but has insufficient evidence of this from other sources to make a reliable judgement.

Commenting of the report the Chair of the Committee, Sir Alan Beith MP, said:

The Ministry of Justice’s handling of the outsourcing of court interpreting services has been nothing short of shambolic. It did not have an adequate understanding of the needs of courts; it failed to heed warnings from the professionals concerned and it did not put sufficient safeguards in place to prevent interruptions in the provision of quality interpreting services to courts.

The select committee’s report is available in both HTML (read online) and PDF versions.

This makes the justice committee the second parliamentary committee to condemn the way the MoJ handled the outsourcing of court interpreting after the Public Accounts Committee’s Chair, Margaret Hodge MP, described the process as “an object lesson in how not to contract out a public service” on the publication of her committee’s report (posts passim).

At the weekend I wrote about Baroness Coussins‘ oral question in the House of Lords on the fiasco otherwise known as Capita’s contract with the Ministry of Justice for the provision of court interpreting services (posts passim).

Hansard has now published the answer from government minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, as well as Baroness Coussins’ supplementary question and a follow-up question from Labour Peer Lord Harrison:

Baroness Coussins: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Lords, performance under the language services contract with Capita is measured by agreed indicators, including the success rate for bookings. I am pleased to report that this improved from 66.5% to 95.3% between February and August 2012. Complaints during this period also fell significantly. The National Audit Office recommended that the Ministry of Justice obtained independent advice on quality standards under the contract and I am pleased to report that the Minister has already met umbrella interpreter organisations in this respect.

Baroness Coussins: My Lords, I am delighted that constructive talks are finally taking place with the professional bodies following the damning reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. However, is the noble Lord aware that the success figure of 95% that he gives excludes the large number of short-notice requests from the courts, which would bring the fulfilment rate down to more like 56%? In any case, that figure tells us nothing about the competence of the interpreters who do turn up. Will the Government now agree to conduct a thorough, independent inspection of the service so that the quality of service can be improved and the number of properly qualified interpreters who are willing to work for Capita can be significantly increased?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: The noble Baroness makes a valid point about short-notice bookings. In that respect, it is true that bookings for hearings with less than 24 hours’ notice were temporarily descoped from the contract in mid-February and the courts and tribunals reverted to previous arrangements. However, I can report to the House that a pilot to return these bookings has begun in selected criminal courts across England and Wales and will be phased back across regions and jurisdictions when the project board has continued confidence in performance.

Turning to the competence and qualifications of interpreters, the new contract allows for an increased range of acceptable qualifications and experience. Under the contract, all foreign language interpreters must show evidence that they have the required qualifications before they can undertake assignments. We have a tiering facility and all courts are encouraged to ensure that interpreters are qualified to tier 1 or tier 2 for all bookings unless otherwise agreed with the court or tribunal.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, there was also a requirement by the National Audit Office to ensure evaluation of the incentives provided for professionally qualified linguists, interpreters and translators that would encourage them back to the courts to work. What is being done on that score?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Lords, all the National Audit Office recommendations have been taken on board and are being fully looked at and implemented.

It would appear that Ministry of Justice civil servants and ministers still believe against all the evidence that the system is working well, even though the Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, recently described the affair as: “An object lesson in how not to contract out a public service” (posts passim).

The Capita/ALS court interpreting fiasco (posts passim) is a story that seems set to run for some time yet.

The crossbench (i.e. independent) peer Baroness Coussins, who is also a Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, has tabled an oral question for the government in tomorrow’s House of Lords business.

Her oral question is:

Baroness Coussins to ask Her Majesty’s Government what quality criteria they are using to assess the performance of Capita in delivering interpreting services to the criminal justice system.

Many of us either in or associated to the language and legal professions, as well as those interested in the administration of justice will await the Government’s answer with interest.

Hat tip: Richard McCarthy

Today the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published its report into the Ministry of Justice’s language service contract which provides interpreters for the courts in England and Wales.

In August 2011, the Ministry signed a four year Framework Agreement for language services with Applied Language Solutions (ALS), under which all justice sector bodies could enter contracts with ALS. It expected the Framework Agreement to be worth up to £42 million a year. In October 2011, the Ministry signed a five year contract under the Framework Agreement which went live nationally on 30 January 2012. The Ministry expected the contract to cost £18 million a year. In December 2011, after the Ministry had signed its contract with ALS, ALS was acquired by Capita.

However, not all has gone well with the contract, to say the least (posts passim). The Committee concluded that the Ministry was not an intelligent customer in procuring language services, despite the risks posed to the administration of justice and to the Ministry’s reputation.

The Ministry failed to undertake proper due diligence on ALS’ winning bid. It failed to heed financial and other advice that ALS was too small and would struggle to meet the Ministry’s requirements in time. The Ministry also ignored strong opposition from the interpreter community. Interpreting is a specialised service. The procurement and later implementation might have been more effective had the strongly held views expressed by experienced interpreters and trade bodies during the Ministry’s consultation been given greater weight. The contract did not include a strong enough incentive for ALS to meet the requirements of the contract right from the start. ALS was acquired by Capita just before the contract started.

When the contract went live, Capita-ALS only met 58% of bookings and there was a sharp rise in the number of ineffective trials due to problems with interpreters. Unnecessary costs were caused to the Ministry of Justice due to the postponing of proceedings and delays which resulted in individuals being held in custody for longer periods. The Ministry was unable to quantify the additional cost to them of the failure. However, Capita has only been fined £2,200 to date for failing to meet the terms of the contract (just why does the UK continue to reward failure? Ed.).

Capita-ALS is now fulfilling more bookings, but it is still struggling to fulfil all and the Committee concerned that it may not be doing enough to recruit interpreters or to provide incentives to interpreters. The Ministry cannot be sure that all interpreters working under the contract have the required skills, experience and character, partly because it is not yet inspecting Capita-ALS as it has the right to do under the contract. Too many courts are having to find their own interpreters, meaning that the purpose of the policy, to provide one centralised system, has not been met.

Speaking on the publication of the report, Committee Chair Margaret Hodge MP said: “This is an object lesson in how not to contract out a public service.”

Helen Grant MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister for Victims and the Courts, held positive discussions on 4th December with nine organisations who united as umbrella group Professional Interpreters for Justice and whose representatives were invited to talks.

In the meeting Helen Grant MP said that the system needs the professional interpreters’ organisations and that if all can work effectively and positively together it will be good for the running of the justice system.

Problems with the operation of the Ministry of Justice contract awarded to Applied Language Solutions (acquired by Capita at the end of 2011) prompted a critical National Audit Office (NAO) report earlier this year. In addition, there have more recently been two parliamentary inquiries by the Public Accounts Committee and Justice Select Committee respectively, who will publish their findings in coming weeks.

Professional Interpreters for Justice has been invited to submit ideas on how the Ministry of Justice can carry out the recommendations of the NAO report, particularly with regard to commissioning an independent evaluation of the adequacy of the new contract’s quality standards for interpreting and translation and the incentives which might attract professionally qualified members of the interpreter organisations back to court work.

In its report the NAO highlighted that as few as 300 (13%) of the 2,300 professionally qualified interpreters on the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) are still working in the court; this has caused problems with both supply and quality of interpreting in courts under the new contract.

Keith Moffitt, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, representing Professional Interpreters for Justice, says: “There’s a real risk of the legal interpreting profession collapsing and we are encouraged that the Justice Minister wants to listen and properly engage the profession in the interests of delivering justice. Our members are principled individuals who feel their professional status has been watered down by the absence of quality in this private contract. We’ll be writing to the Minister with our proposals for working groups to tackle the issues”.

The Justice Minister invited proposals from Professional Interpreters for Justice within 14 days.