Outsourcing and privatisation disaster outfit

Sub-contracting is quite common in the language business. Every week or two I’ll do a job for an agency that’s been placed with them by another (usually larger) agency.

This seems to go all the way to the top and is not confined to translation: interpreting jobs also get sub-contracted.

As regards interpreting, RPSI Linguist Lounge last week published a post written by Oskar offering evidence that Capita Translation & Interpreting are also playing the same game to attempt to meet their contractual obligations to the Ministry of Justice under the framework agreement for interpreting services for courts and tribunals. Oskar’s words are reproduced in full below.

I did some private work for solicitors last week at Uxbridge Magistrates Court. I spoke to a Romanian interpreter from thebigword. It seems that C-ta are unable to fulfil their contractual obligations, so courts are trying to call other agencies. On several occasions I was told by interpreters working outside of London that in several counties – Cambs, Notts, Northants, courts revert to calling other agencies or small/local agencies were approached by C-ta and asked to subcontract their interpreters in several languages. With regard to their so-called tier system, I have been advised that for NHS bookings they send people classified as Tier 4, what’s next then: a proverbial cleaning lady, mind you, these ladies are better paid and promptly as well. Who is behind upholding this unprofitable, undermanned and badly managed contract? Why aren’t SOCA or other LEA investigating it already?

The Independent reports today that more than 500 court cases are being thrown out or delayed each week due to failings by prosecutors or in the court system.

Government figures reveal that a total 106,859 cases before crown and magistrates’ courts were dropped or delayed in 2012, costing the public purse an estimated £17.4 mn.

Of this total the absence of an interpreter was responsible for delays to 642 cases in the year in question.

No doubt Helen Grant MP and her colleagues at the Ministry of Justice will attribute these interpreter absences as “teething troubles” with its contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting, rather than a sign of the latter’s total incompetence and yet more evidence that it was wrong to fiddle with the previous arrangements with interpreting services for courts and tribunals in the first place.

There’s a debate on criminal legal aid reforms and price competitive tendering taking place in Westminster Hall on 4 September 2013. The debate has been secured by Labour’s Karl Turner MP and will centre on the Ministry of Justice’s proposed changes to criminal legal aid contained in the consultation paper “Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a More Credible and Efficient System”.

Ahead of the debate, Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL), a 2,000-strong group of lawyers committed to practising in areas of law traditionally funded by legal aid, has very helpfully prepared a briefing note (PDF) ahead of this debate.

The briefing note is not very complementary about the MoJ’s experience with the outsourcing of interpreting services for courts and tribunals to ALS/Capita T&I (posts passim) and makes the following point about this ongoing fiasco.

Short term “savings” cannot justify the long term cost to the justice system, one which Mr Grayling is correct to describe as “a justice system of which we can be proud and which justly deserves its world-wide recognition for impartiality and fairness”. We should learn the lessons of outsourcing to the lowest bidder and how this leads to the state picking up the tab when providers fail to deliver, for example, the contracting of interpreting services for the court and tribunal system.

What’s the betting Justice Minister ‘Failing’ Grayling – the first non-lawyer to be appointed Lord Chancellor since 1673 – completely ignores all advice and pushes ahead regardless with his disastrous plans?

Reposted from RPSI Linguist Lounge.

Barbara Hecht writes:

I represented a 52 year-old woman of good character needing an interpreter, first appearance 10 am start – she was in virtual court so she was in the police station. The interpreter was there early and promptly (and spoke the language required well) but…there was a part heard trial in another court where no interpreter had been arranged. So they took my interpreter, and my woman in the police station who had already been there from 6 pm the night before had to wait.

When I raised this with the trial DJ and said she was diabetic, she took the view that she could wait a bit because the police would look after her and carried on hearing submissions a bit longer in the part heard trial. A replacement interpreter was booked to come at 1.45 pm. When I found the replacement interpreter at 2.15 pm because the matter was put back to 2.30, he said he had to go!

According to company financial information website DueDil, Capita Translation & Interpreting, the company that has been entrusted (rather foolishly. Ed.) by the Ministry of Justice with providing interpreting services for courts and tribunals in England and Wales (posts passim), is not doing particularly well financially, as the screenshot of the company’s latest basic financial information shows.

Would you buy this company or offer it more work?

Answers in the comments please!

Reposted from Linguist Lounge.

On Wednesday, 7th August 2013, Hammrammr wrote:

Some time ago Capita TI implemented the so called JSA – new contract which was rather unclear and detrimental to interpreters. After several weeks of wrangling with their completely untrained workers I managed to get hold of someone dealing with legal matters. I forwarded several emails regarding inconsistencies and unclear issues within that ‘document’. Finally I received a rather short message that their legal team acknowledges my concerns and I can basically get lost. My concerns were not only about insurance but focused on special deals granted to a small group of Polish interpreter at Westminster MC. My further enquiries resulted in a message from an individual calling himself Commercial Manager at Capita HQ, that my profile was deactivated, which means that they do need my services any longer as they have now enough docile, new breed of ‘interpreters’. They are not going to grant any special, ‘bespoke’ contracts to anyone else.

Conclusion: As this “de facto employment” agency enjoys a monopoly in the CJS sector of interpreting they became a law unto themselves – arrogant, abusive and biased. Such action basically barred me from working in the courts. I conducted another survey focused on awareness of various court staff regarding the use of interpreters without middlemen. I called and/or visited 14 courts in Northern and SW areas of England. The same reaction: from disinterested, to onward hostile. Most of relevant court employees were not even aware that FWA is not a closed shop and they are allowed to use other methods of booking interpreters. Some of them mentioned that such a decision is outside their remit, each case to be authorised by their court manager. Several still keep their own records and book proper interpreters when and if required though.

Let us hope that so called FWA is terminated sooner or later. I am going to seek legal advice from an employment law specialist in order to enter legal proceedings in the future.

Evidence continues to stack up on the Court Delays website about Capita Translation & Interpreting’s continuing failure to meet the terms of its courts and tribunals interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).

This blog has previously highlighted Capita’s tactics to save its own skin when challenged; back in May it seemed to imply that the Clerk of Nottingham Crown Court was being untruthful when it failed to provide an interpreter for a murder case (posts passim).

That is, however, not an isolated case, as shown by the following comment posted on the Court Delays website by Tim Sapwell.

One whole day of Court time wasted.

Warwick sitting at Leamington Spa

9/7/13
Defendant in robbery trial not produced from custody. Then no Punjabi interpreter for witness. Capita claim on telephone to CPS that no booking has been made. This is clearly not correct, because they later send an e-mail giving the exact details of the booking as the subject heading! They say they only have 2 Punjabi interpreters, one of whom is busy and the other cannot be found (!). It is suggested that the interpreter cannot attend before 12 noon the following day because he/she is based 100 miles away. Options offered are that the interpreter could be available at “around 12″ the following day or else a possibility that another could be found who might be available for 10.15 am.

Identity of defendant withheld – case not concluded.

First Capita T&I tell an untruth to the Crown Prosecution Service and then contradict themselves: you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!

As far as I can see, honesty and integrity are important qualities to possess for undertaking work in the courts. Capita T&I clearly has neither.