Interpreters stay away from courts in protest at privatised contract

Linguists unhappy with Applied Language Solutions' deal with Ministry of Justice, which has seen their rates almost halved


Owen Bowcott and Tom Midlane


guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 02.00 EST
 
As many as 1,000 interpreters are boycotting a privatised contract to supply linguistic services to all English and Welsh courts, resulting in postponed hearings, suspects being released and compensation claims.


The revolt within the professional community against cut-price employment terms imposed by Applied Language Solutions is spreading amid criticism of the quality of interpreting supplied by the Oldham-based firm.
The five-year deal with the Ministry of Justice, which began on 1 February, is intended to save £18m a year out of an annual budget of £60m. ALS also has exclusive contracts to supply translation services to the London 2012 Olympics and a number of NHS trusts.

Within the courts, solicitors, magistrates and judges have complained of disruption and warned about the danger of miscarriages of justice. In some cases suspects have had to be released when no interpreters were available; in others people have spent extra time in detention. During one hearing at Sandwell magistrates court, a solicitor had to translate proceedings into Punjabi for a client because there was no interpreter.

The justice minister, Crispin Blunt admitted in the Commons that there were "an unacceptable number of problems in the first two weeks of full implementation of the contract". The Ministry of Justice said it was monitoring the situation on a daily basis.

ALS was bought by the public services provider Capita last December. Two weeks later, after problems emerged, the department authorised courts to bypass the centralised system for urgent cases until further notice, allowing them to hire their own interpreters without going through the company.

According to interpreting organisations' estimates, about 60% of the 2,300 people on the National Register of Public Service Interpreters are refusing to work for ALS. Last week there were protests outside Manchester's crown courts. Interpreters claim hourly rates have been slashed and that they are being offered minimal travel allowances.

Ian Kelcey, former chair of the Law Society's criminal law committee, described the situation as "little short of a debacle". He added: "The problem with ALS is that the government decided to do it and chose someone who probably can't provide the capacity. We are not sure they are using interpreters of a requisite standard."

Freelance interpreters, who condemn the contract as a monopoly, have accused ALS of using interpreters inexperienced with court work. But ALS says it only uses "qualified interpreters who have been assessed and demonstrated evidence of suitable experience and linguistic skills".

David Evans, chairman of the Magistrates' Association in Lincolnshire, where scores of cases have been postponed, said: "There have been instances of interpreters just not turning up. We have had people arrested but because there's no interpreter they have had to be released. Some have been arrested and released several times for that reason. It's not good for justice.

"I'm getting stories about it every time I speak to magistrates. No one is happy with this. I understand interpreters have not been offered very attractive terms. I have heard of an interpreter being sent up from Hertfordshire; that can't be cost-effective if the contract is supposed to save money."

Ken Sheraton, a district judge in Peterborough, said he was unable to go ahead with two cases in one day because interpreters failed to materialise. In the first week of the ALS contract, 12 cases had to be adjourned in the city's magistrates court.

Geoffrey Buckingham, chair of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters, said applications were being made by solicitors for wasted costs orders against ALS so that their clients would not have to pay extra for cases that were delayed or postponed.

In a letter to the MoJ, he complained about interpreters receiving repeated calls. "Hardly a day goes by without colleagues [receiving] unwanted and unsolicited approaches despite not being registered with the contractor [ALS]." Names of interpreters may have been obtained without permission, he suggested, raising questions about data protection.

At Snaresbrook crown court in east London, Judge Murray Shanks, considering an application for a wasted costs order against ALS for failing to inform the court that an interpreter would not be available, found that it "was serious misconduct" and did "cause waste" when the case had to be adjourned.

But he declined to award costs because the incident occurred in the first days of the contract and represented "teething" difficulties. He added: "There will be problems with this contract if the point of contact is with a call centre." Counsel for ALS said that the company had asked the MoJ not to introduce the service across the whole country immediately.

The shadow justice minister, Andy Slaughter, said: "Interpreters are a highly skilled and essential part of the justice system. This scheme sacrifices that in favour of unachievable savings and private profit. We questioned [the justice secretary] Ken Clarke in November about the business model of this contractor but he ignored our warnings. The result is confusion and delay in the courts, the potential for serious miscarriages of justice, huge wasted costs and risks to public safety. People are being wrongly remanded in custody for lack of information and courts are grinding to a halt."

Syed Amjad Ali, 53, of Reliance Translations, who organised the Manchester demonstration, said: "Interpreters were getting £30 an hour before, for a minimum of three hours, now they offering them £16-£22, no travel for the first hour and petrol of 20p per mile.

"Interpreters are not going to work on these low rates and this is going to affect the quality of interpretation. Three Romanian interpreters were booked by ALS in Manchester city magistrate court and no one turned up, so the trial has been postponed.

"At an immigration tribunal in Manchester, a Czech au-pair came. She had never been in court before and she asked us: 'How do you address the judge? Is it your highness or your excellency?' That is the kind of people they are sending, despite the fact their contract clearly states they will use only qualified interpreters. We are seriously concerned about the welfare and risk to the witnesses and defendants."

Unite, the union that represents many interpreters, has raised as an example of potential problems caused by inadequate interpreting the case of Iqbal Begum, a woman who killed her husband after years of domestic abuse. Only after the trial and her conviction for murder in 1981 did it emerge that the court interpreter did not speak her language. She had no idea about the difference between murder and manslaughter. Begum was eventually released on appeal but took her own life.

Locog, the London Olympics organising committee, confirmed that ALS would be translating brochures and guides for athletes, the media and officials. "We have been working with them since 2010," a Locog spokesman said. "All is going well." That contract is worth less than £10m.

In an attempt to recruit more interpreters, ALS has begun offering more favourable terms in recent days. "The proposed cost reductions are based on a combination of operational efficiencies and the removal of some of the financial payment terms that had become extremely costly," said a spokesperson.

"We have consulted with linguists and listened to their feedback regarding the new payment terms and the fact that court case durations are often much shorter than the original booking time. As a result we have increased payments and travel expenses to combat some of this loss of earnings for interpreters."

ALS, which admits cases have been cancelled, said it worked with "hundreds of public sector customers, providing a range of language services. We currently deliver on our commitments to all of these customers." A spokesperson added: "We investigate, in full, any customer complaints that we receive."

Asked about calls to interpreters who did not wish to work with ALS, the company said: "If a suitable linguist cannot be located within our database for an assignment then we will explore other public databases to identify qualified freelance linguists and offer them the opportunity to work with us."

An MoJ spokesperson said: "There have been an unacceptable number of problems in the first weeks of full implementation of the contract and we have asked the contractor to take urgent steps to improve performance. We remain committed to ensuring the rights and needs of those who require interpreters are safeguarded, and are monitoring the system on a daily basis."

Under the contract, financial penalties can be imposed for failures to deliver services.

The company

Applied Language Solutions was founded by Gavin Wheeldon in 2003. His ambition, stated on the company website, is to become "the biggest language provider in the world".

Wheeldon, now 35, began working evenings on telephone sales at the age of 14. After joining a language translation company, he launched his own firm out of the back bedroom of his home.

He appeared on the BBC2 business programme Dragon's Den, trying to negotiate a loan for £250,000 to boost his start-up company. He failed to persuade the panel to back him.

ALS has developed machine translation software to speed up the process of transcribing documents, with customers being offered the option of "light" or "heavy" edit for linguists to check grammar, meaning and spelling.

The company, based in Oldham, says it has interpreters available to work in 170 languages. It has 130 full-time staff in the UK, India, Europe and the US. In 2011, its annual turnover was £10.6m.

In interviews, Wheeldon has said he prefers driving Porsches to Ferraris. In 2008 his mother, Denise, told the Oldham Advertiser: "My nickname for Gavin was our little Arthur Daley, my dad always said if he didn't end up behind bars he'd end up making a fortune!"

The interpreter's story: Mirela Watson

'A lot of the new interpreters have no understanding of legal terminology, which is vital in our profession'


Tom Midlane


guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 02.00 EST
 
Mirela Watson, 43, is a Romanian-born interpreter with 15 years' experience of court interpreting in the UK. She is also a member of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters.


"I am extremely unhappy with the new arrangements," she said. "ALS is supplying a lot of unqualified, unvetted interpreters - myself and my colleagues have been visiting the courts randomly to monitor ALS's work and the standard is absolutely unacceptable, it could lead to a serious miscarriage of justice.

"I have heard a judge say, 'You have been charged with …' and had that interpreted as 'You have to pay the court' - meaning charged as in 'pay'.

"The majority of us are thinking, if the new contract is not finished, to change our professions. I have been devoted to the court justice system for the past 15 years. We are linguists, we are not just speakers of another language.

"My husband is English, I'm Romanian by birth, my daughter has been raised bilingual – but being bilingual doesn't make you an interpreter. A lot of the new interpreters have no understanding of legal terminology, which is vital in our profession. We have the experience behind us and it is something you cannot buy. To be forced to join a system you don't agree with is extremely unfair.

"We were never consulted at any point. The old system worked, we had a good relationship with the police forces, with the court system, court listings officers knew where the closest interpreters lived.

"I have to review my entire life. Like most people, we have bills to pay, but this is not purely financial – we are dedicated, we love the job. You have to have a special manner to deal with court staff, which you gain by experience. To have that taken away from you, yes, it is a shock. It makes you extremely bitter.

"In the past 10 days, we have been bombarded by the listing officers, asking us to cover the gaps left by ALS, which we are not willing to do. As long as the contract is still in force, it would simply be papering over the cracks.

"The mathematics is very simple: by having ALS, the courts actually spend more money – it's a completely false economy. It costs in excess of £769 a day for a person to be remanded in custody. We have experience of people who have been brought to custody three or four times because interpreters haven't turned up, which translates to a lot of money."

The Guardian

Violent clients, traumatised victims, late payment - the life of a court interpreter

Magdalena Glowacka

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 March 2012 09.18 EDT
 
Very few people know what the life of a professional interpreter is like. I have worked as a Polish interpreter for a number of years, and although I am probably not the most experienced person in the field, I have worked long enough to find the deal under which the Ministry of Justice has contracted Applied Language Solutions to supply all linguistic services in English and Wales unacceptable. We are not too greedy or proud to accept the new rules. We can see how how flawed they are.


Only very few professions require someone to be totally flexible - and I mean totally. I no longer recall how many times I have been called in the middle of the night to come down to a police station to interpret for someone in custody, or to assist with a witness statement, nor how many times I have had to call off a meeting with people I care about because the job comes first.

How many professionals have to deal with a beaten and traumatised wife, a woman pushed onto a railway track by her loved one on Valentine's Day, a small girl raped by her stepbrother, or a man who had been raped in prison? How many of you have had to deal with the threats of being stabbed because the client didn't realise the interpreter was there to help him? I have. People have vomited on my suit. I have stepped into puddles of urine on a cell floor. Nobody warned me that I would have to deal with such situations. I had to learn how to cope with them.

Only people who have been done this job for a number of years know what it is like to stand in the witness box for hours as a defendant is cross-examined, or how it feels when your client is mentally ill and talking nonsense or insulting the judge. It takes strength and courage to interpret their words into English. Only a professional interpreter knows what it is like to sit in the dock next to someone charged with murder or an offence involving serious violence.

Nobody else really knows that it is extremely difficult job, which carries incredible responsibility, and which is emotionally exhausting. Some critics of the interpreters who are protesting about the new system have no idea of what the job involves. Let's take the payments. Although the rates of pay were decent, they were never good. The old national agreement that used to regulate our work stipulated that we should be paid within six weeks for each job. I can barely ever remember being paid within that time. On countless occasions I have awaited payment for months. Most Christmases, I was totally cashless due to the fact that the court staff was too busy to sort out the payments before the end of the year. I no longer remember how many times I have had to chase courts for money, remembering not to be too harsh so I might be booked again. On numerous occasions I came to court to interpret for one client and ended up interpreting for three or more during the day, or was put in a position when I had to interpret for two or three defendants in the same proceedings because of 'cost savings'.

I do not want to hurt anybody's feelings, but there have been a number of occasions when I was paid just for coming to court and once I arrived there turned out to be more than one interpreter booked for one case - or a case was simply discontinued and nobody bothered to cancel the interpreter. Those sorts of things are never mentioned when the cost to the taxpayer of interpreting services is quoted. And we pay taxes too.

We are not too proud to work for ALS, although perhaps we should be – given that they require us to work for the same rates as people without any qualification whatsoever that would entitle them to work as an interpreter in the old system. We just feel it is not right. Besides, lots of professional interpreters did not just acquire the recommended minimum qualification under the previous system, which is a Diploma in Public Service Interpreting and 400 hours of experience. Many hold at least one masters' degree, if not more, in translation, conference interpreting or law, as well as attending conferences and short courses.

To be completely frank, the system was not working well, but we were doing a good job. We were helping people to communicate with their lawyers. We were the ones who explained to people how the UK court system works. When they were not represented, for whatever reason, we very often acted as psychotherapists - listening to the problems of complete strangers and dealing with personal tragedies. Sometimes we were asked for small change for a ticket home, something to eat or a cigarette, or a client asked if they could make a call from our mobiles at our expense. Try telling someone who is, like you, a foreigner in this country and in a seemingly hopeless situation that "it's not my job" to agree to these requests.

I have a confession to make. Apart from being an interpreter, I also work as an examiner for a body that was providing the necessary qualifications to perform this job. Each year I have been told that I cannot pass anybody whom I would not trust to act as my interpreter, if I could not speak English. This was, until recently, a minimum standard threshold for all professional interpreters. I don't know what standards will operate under the new system, but from what I have heard they are considerably below that threshold. Anyone who can hire someone who can simply speak two languages, at times very poorly, has no idea of the importance of interpreting within the criminal justice system.

So it is not that we do not want to work for ALS: in spite of all these drawbacks, most of us love the job. But we do need recognition and respect for the job we have been doing. Put simply, the current offer is ludicrous.

Interpreters are holding a protest outside the Commons this afternoon about the ALS contract with the Ministry of Justice

 The Guardian

Government's court interpreting agency hit with wasted costs orders

The agency appointed by the Government as the sole provider of court interpreters has been issued with a number of wasted costs orders after issues with its service led to some cases being adjourned.


Dhaneshwar Sharma of Sharma Law Solicitors has issued several wasted costs orders against Applied Language Solutions (ALS), with one order already granted by the Magistrates Courts of London and one currently pending approval.

Sharma, who has experienced a number of instances where court hearings have been adjourned repeatedly due to ALS interpreters failing to turn up, said that any attempts by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and ALS to improve the situation have not gone far enough (16 February 2012).

Outsourcing forces untrained translators on courts, campaigners say

Monday, 5 March 2012 12:14 PM


By Oliver Hotham

The Ministry of Justice's decision to outsource public service interpreting is leading to unqualified people being used as interpreters in court, campaigners said today.

Interpreters for Justice claimed the court system was being thrown into chaos by the decision to outsource translation services to Applied Language Solutions (ALS).

It has highlighted research suggesting 90% of legal interpreters are not signed up to the Ministry of Jutice's outsourced program.

"ALS is saying they have 3,000 interpreters on their register, but when nine in ten of professional interpreters who replied to our survey say they are refusing to sign up, this does not stack up," said spokesman Geoffrey Buckingham.

"The result is that people without training, qualifications or legal experience are being used to interpret in court which is creating chaos and higher costs.

"The Ministry of Justice might say these are teething problems, but we say they are terminal."

Members of the legal profession are being urged to provide evidence of the problems the policy is creating by completing an online survey.

Interpreters for Justice says it has already compiled evidence of over 150 court cases being adjourned or cancelled due to a ALS interpreter.

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