BBC on Court Interpreting: Chaos Continues
Changes to the way our magistrates’ and crown courts in Lincolnshire provide interpreters for foreign nationals are still inconsistent according to some local solicitors. And that’s costing money and time. A private company called Capita took over the provision from locally appointed freelancers last year. Now latest results show Capita didn’t meet its targets and that lead to 600 court trials across the country being abandoned because of a lack of interpreters. The government has defended the changes saying that there has been a dramatic improvement.
John Storer, a solicitor from Boston, and Yelena McCafferty of RPSI Linguist Lounge take part in the programme while Capita Translation and Interpreting and the Ministry of Justice send their prepared statements. The remaining question is how can the Ministry of Justice state they have saved 15 million pounds with Capita when there was no accurate figure of court interpreting spending before the current contract and the government refuses to publish the amount spent on court interpreters outside of the Capita contract over the past 15 months?
Listen to the programme here
