Interpreting Services in the Courts (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, for an excellent summary of our report and the flaws that we found in the court interpretation system. I also welcome the Minister to her position. I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say. It is a pity that at her first official outing she will defend some of the things that we found indefensible but, no doubt, she will make an excellent job of it.

The overwhelming conclusion that we all reached is summed up in paragraph 41 of our report:

“There is a clear disconnect between what the government hopes is happening, what the companies contracted to deliver the services believe is happening, and what frontline interpreters and legal professionals report is happening with interpreting services in the courts”.


That message came through time and time again. We had evidence that interpreters and translators can lose significant amounts of money, with limited options to find alternative work when cases are delayed or cancelled. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, described some of those. Current provisions such as the two-hour guaranteed payment and cancellation payments are not adequate, especially when interpreters are booked for extended periods of time.

However, the MoJ view is that the two-hour minimum booking provides a balance between attracting and supporting interpreters to take bookings while maintaining value for money for the MoJ. Of course, it certainly provides value for the MoJ but at the expense of interpreters, who can lose a whole day’s pay.

We were critical of data collection, which we felt did not present a full picture of the problems of interpretation in the courts and could lead or had led to miscarriages of justice. The MoJ view was that there were no known instances of miscarriages of justice because of flaws in interpretation. But if you have inadequate data to begin with, how on earth can you tell? Also, if the interpreter is misinterpreting, who is to know? The MoJ view is that it is up to the judge and lawyers to complain about interpretation faults. But the dynamics of the court system is that unless the interpreter is, say, rolling around stone drunk or incapable, no one will check that the interpreted words are exactly right.

The MoJ says that it is up to the courts to manage all aspects of the case. That leads to the innate judicial arrogance that we see in the treatment of interpreters, who are regarded as of little consequence in the courts. For example, on the treatment of the interpreter workforce, we said that in some cases interpreters are not treated as professionals working within the court and are not considered key members in the running of the court. Interpreters are treated like members of the public and are not kept up to date on court logistics. Furthermore, we said that interpreters are not given appropriate information about potentially long, complex or technical court cases that may require extra preparation and resources by the interpreter ahead of time.

We said in our report that the Government should provide guidance to ensure that interpreters’ key role in court proceedings is recognised and that His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service provides information about cases ahead of time in order to improve interpreters’ well-being and ensure that they can make necessary preparations. Interpreters told us that the police, in the main, treated them far better than the lawyers in the courts. In particular, the police would brief interpreters in advance that there might be, say, technical forensic terms to be translated so that they could swot up beforehand—no such treatment in the courts.

I accept that in a court where no interpretation is required, the most important people in the room are the judge and the lawyers questioning the accused and the witnesses. But where an interpreter is used, that interpreter becomes by far the most important person in the court. It is the interpreter who will translate the lawyers’ questions for the witness or the accused and then translate back the answers. In those cases, no one is more important than the interpreters and they should be given the respect and facilities that they need, like any of the lawyers, and not treated like a tea lady. Saying that it is up to the judge to manage the court is not good enough. Interpreters must be given advance warning of the broad nature of the case, whether it is a violent crime with technical medical forensic terms, or financial crime with its own vocabulary, or any other specialist case.

We said that the Government should introduce detailed audio equipment, including sound booths for interpreters, as part of court refurbishments, and provide appropriate portable equipment for unrefurbished courts. I accept that the main obstacle here is cost and that many courts would need some fairly extensive investment in audio technology. But the price of that kit is falling all the time and the quality is increasing exponentially.

Now the Ministry of Justice is in favour of it, but I wonder whether it is facing lawyer pushback and not going flat-out on this technology. I say that because the MoJ response, in paragraph 18.5, was:

“We will review the use of this equipment and promote its use where appropriate, within a 6-month period”.


That rather contradicts its comments in the preceding paragraph that

“the majority of courts and tribunals have the tools to support remote attendance should that be appropriate, and we are improving the equipment to enable this more widely”.

Then there is the statement that

“the decision on whether remote interpreting can be utilised in a hearing remains for the judiciary”.

Why? On what basis does a judge make a decision not to use remote interpreting facilities? Is it based on his technical analysis of the quality of the recordings or the locations, or on his personal preference that he does not like it and wants to see the bodies in court?

I suggest that this is not a decision for a judge. The Ministry of Justice must do a technical assessment of courts and pronounce which ones have good enough audio equipment, and also at the interpreter ends, for remote to be used at all times in that courtroom. It should be a technical assessment for the MoJ to make, not a judge.

In conclusion, the impressions I got from the MoJ were twofold: first, a fear of challenging old-fashioned judicial and lawyer behaviour that is causing inefficiencies. We have not finished taking evidence or written our report yet, but we are doing an inquiry at the moment and courts are able to see and hear top-quality digital audio and video recordings of police interviews. But the lawyers and the CPS insist on having them transcribed and then act them out in court. The technology is a million times better than in 1980, but the courts are still stuck in their Rumpole of the Bailey time warp.

The other impression I get is that the MoJ thought that it was doing everything rather well and right: that it knew what it was doing and there were no real problems with interpretation, or the concerns raised by interpreters. As we say in our report, and I conclude with my opening remarks, this investigation revealed a disconnect between what the MoJ thought it was buying, what the providers thought they were supplying and what the interpreters were having to do on the ground. That disconnect still prevails, I am afraid.