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A mass court observation project which sat in on more than 1,100 hearings has reported that more than a fifth of hearings (230) involved a defendant for whom English was not a first language. An interpreter was not provided in 104 of those cases. Defendants who needed interpreters were ‘some of the worst served by the court’, the report said.
The figures come just months after the UK set a new record for net migration
The report by the Equality and Social Justice Committee said mistakes and misdiagnoses often occurred due to the "wholly inappropriate use of family members as interpreters in medical settings rather than trained professionals" and failing to provide adequate interpretation in a medical situation was a "potential breach of their human rights".
A woman who went to her GP with a urinary tract infection (UTI) missed the chance to catch her cancer early because she relied on her son to translate.
