Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Bethell on 3 March (HL Deb, col 523), what progress they have made in (1) issuing advice and information about COVID-19 to the public in languages other than English, and (2) arranging specific briefings for public service interpreters working in the NHS.

As part of the Government's work to ensure the population are informed about COVID-19 and how best to respond, we have translated the Stay at home guidance for households with possible coronavirus (COVID-19) and the COVID 19: guidance on social distancing for everyone in the United Kingdom and protecting older people and vulnerable adults, into a range of languages. These are the critical pieces of guidance that are relevant to a general public audience.

The translations include Arabic (Modern), Bengali, Cantonese, French, Gujarati, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Urdu and Welsh. These translations can be found online at GOV.UK.

The Government will continue to keep this under review and assess where information needs to be translated into other languages. In the meantime, many local authorities are making arrangements to translate into languages that are widely spoken in their area.

In general, translation and interpretation within National Health Service organisations is commissioned at an organisational level, so it would be down to individual organisations to brief their suppliers of translation and interpretation services.