England: company providing court interpretation service following privatisation fined £16,000

Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division(pictured), described Capita’s failure as “lamentable”.

The comments come amid concern amongst lawyers and politicians in relation to how the £300 million contract is handled.

In 2013 the justice select committee said the way in which the court interpreting service was privatised was “shambolic” and that it had led to the collapse of trials as well as suspects being remanded in custody unnecessarily.

The service was taken over in 2012 by Capita after it bought the firm ALS which had awarded the contract.

Hundreds of professional interpreters have boycotted the service because of what they consider excessively low fees.

Sir James said Capita had failed repeatedly to supply Slovak interpreters in a case which began in 2012.

Its interpreters failed to appear or were late six times at Dover family proceedings court. This led to the abandonment of the hearings in which parents were challenging the removal of their children.

Capita’s interpreters failed to appear again when the case was heard in the High Court in London before Sir James last May.

He adjourned proceedings and ordered HM Courts and Tribunal Service to provide interpreters.

He said: “It would have been unjust, indeed inhumane, to continue with the final hearing of applications as significant as those before me – this, after all, was their final opportunity to prevent the adoption of their children – if the parents were unable to understand what was being said.”

The judge added: “There have been serial failures by Capita in this case against a background of wider systemic problems… The failures …. were not minor but extensive, and, at two different stages of the litigation, they had a profound effect on the conduct of the proceedings.

“I am not to be understood as suggesting that Capita will be liable for each and every failure to provide an interpreter.

“lamentable though its failures to provide such interpreters were in this particular case and, seemingly, more generally. Everything will depend upon the precise circumstances of the particular case.”

Capita’s incompetence is the latest in a series which have caused concern amongst the judiciary.

Sir Brian Leveson’s review last month argued that private security firms guilty of such failures should face severe penalties.