BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on court interpreting
Stuart Jackson MP: “They didn’t seem to have done any proper due diligence in terms of looking at what they actually needed in the contract. They had a few people sitting around doing a public consultation saying: Yes, there will be enough interpreters. In the end at the start of the contract they wanted 1,200 nation-wide interpreters. They ended up with less than 300. The burden has fallen on the magistrates’ and crown courts when interpreters just hadn’t turned up. It’s been an absolute costly shambles.”
Guillermo Makin of the Society for Public Service Interpreting: “We told the MoJ when they called us in right after the election in 2010 that this wouldn’t work. And we offered them an alternative which we are using in Cambridgeshire with the police that has saved the police 46% on interpreters.”
Listen to the full interview on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
Copyright: British Broadcasting Corporation
