Interpreting Services in the Courts (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Morris for providing this opportunity to consider the recommendations of the Public Services Committee report and the Government’s response. I add my welcome to my noble friend Lady Levitt, the Minister, for the baptism of her first debate in Grand Committee, which I am sure will be a precursor to many others.

I come new to this issue, but I saw that the committee’s emphasis was on the fundamental importance of equal and ready access to the law for all. It is clear that this debate is timely. The current contract for interpreting services in the courts expires next year, and the Ministry of Justice is now going through a reprocurement process. The opportunity to improve the service, should it need improvement, and solve problems is now.

I welcome the committee’s report. It makes many practical and forward-looking recommendations, drawn from a wide base of evidence given by court officials, interpreters, barristers, solicitors and the MoJ. To be able to access justice, interpreters and translators are, of course, sometimes necessary. No one should be disadvantaged in the legal process because of language barriers. Although interpreting is used in only a very small proportion of cases each year, the numbers are still considerable. I am sure I was not alone in being surprised that some 17,000 bookings for interpreters, across more than 150 languages, are dealt with by the MoJ through contracted private language providers each month.

The committee concluded that

“the current state of interpreting services in the courts is not working”

as “efficiently and effectively” as it should, representing

“a significant risk to the administration of justice”.

Given the number of cases involved, that conclusion is truly worrying. The committee’s report points to issues such as an inaccessible and poorly understood complaints process, which leads to the underreporting of problems. It also identifies the difficulties in recruiting and retaining highly qualified interpreters, due to widespread dissatisfaction with the remuneration, and terms and conditions. I will focus on those issues.

My noble friend Lady Morris has called this a significant crisis. The report cites evidence of interpreters being unable to make enough money to earn a living, and that low and opaque pay, a lack of control over earnings and remuneration for cancelled or delayed bookings, as well as a lack of respect, are all causes for leaving the profession. If it is the case, as my noble friend said, that T&Cs for interpreters have not changed since 2016, it is no wonder that experienced interpreters are leaving the contracted provider and offering services to the courts off plan when requests to the contracted provider cannot be met.

To counter this, the report recommends introducing minimum pay rates, annually reviewed, as well as improvements to cancellation pay, travel pay that actually reflects the cost of travel, and taking steps to ensure respectful treatment of professional interpreters.

Its recommendations also include having a more robust and transparent quality assurance program, and states that if the MoJ can seize

“the opportunity of the new contract it can improve the quality and transparency of the service, while preparing for the future both in terms of technology and the future workforce”.

Doing nothing, it says,

“risks reinforcing significant jeopardy to justice for the foreseeable future”.

That is strong wording and underlines just how important it is that we get the next steps right.

The response to the report from professional bodies was widely positive. The National Register of Public Services Interpreters welcomed the proposed new qualifications framework and strengthened QA. They all agreed that it is crucial that these steps are taken to ensure that poor quality interpretation does not lead to unfair trials or case delays. However, the NRPSI also said these developments will not stop interpreters “voting with their feet”. It and others point out that interpreters are choosing not to work with the MoJ’s outsourced contractor because of insufficient pay, lack of recognition, and unsupportive terms and conditions.

It is really disappointing to see the Government’s rejection of the report’s conclusions and recommendations on these points. It seems obvious that any progress on quality assurance will be hampered if new interpreters are not coming into the service due to a lack of improvement in pay and conditions. It will not serve justice if moves to improve the service falter due to a failure to address these key issues.

On qualifications, I gather that fewer than half of interpreters on the MoJ list hold a level 6 vocational qualification. Can my noble friend the Minister give us any indication of progress on plans to ensure that court interpreters meet level 6 qualification requirements? I am pleased that this is a government ambition but ask the Minister why this is not reflected in the qualification requirement expected to be included in the new contract.

The report recommends that the Government ensure that the new contract can be adjusted to require level 6 and introduces this requirement once an appropriate number of level 6 qualified interpreters are on the register. To that end, I note that interpreting services were to be included on the agenda for the June HMCTS strategic group—the forum in which the MoJ consults legal professional associations. Can the Minister relay any positive outcomes from this?

On remuneration, can the Minister indicate any further steps the MoJ could take to tackle the ongoing issue of off-contract bookings, driven by poor Ts and Cs and inadequate pay? Can she give us an assurance that the department will look again at the new contract having provisions for reviewing and increasing minimum pay on an annual basis? More dialogue on improving Ts and Cs is vital. As the NRPSI points out, if they do not address the reasons why interpreters continue to walk away from MoJ contract work, the new contracts and all the other hoped-for improvements in interpreting services in the courts will not serve.