Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what criteria are used to assess the suitability of an interpreting agency for use in court work; and how that work is assessed and monitored against those criteria for individual providers.

As per the Public Contract Regulations 2015, the suppliers with which we have contracts in place were assessed against the publicly published evaluation criteria for that tender. Please find evaluation criteria attached.

Ongoing quality is maintained in a number of forms:

• Monitoring of key performance indicators including, but not limited to, attendance, security and complexity uplifts on bookings, portal availability, helpdesk, complaints, data provision;
• Inclusion of comprehensive audit rights and open book accounting clauses allowing MoJ to check the supplier maintains financial stability and their obligations under the contract;
• Use of sub-contractors is quality assured by an on-boarding approval process and quarterly reviews and audits to ensure compliance from the sub-contractor in accordance with supplier obligations in the contract.
• A quality assurance contract provides independent spot checks of interpreter performance against a predefined checklist, linked to the standards in the contract, in a consistent manner. Those that fail are removed from the approved register until an in-person assessment has been conducted by the QA provider, and that assessment has subsequently been passed and the QA provider is confident that the Language Professional can be reinstated to the register. The language professional will then be mystery shopped again within 6 months of reinstatement.