Astounded at the MoJ's failure to collect details of court jobs outside FWA
Re: FOI Request regarding interpreters booked directly by courts rather than through the FWA contract
Dear Ms Haig
I am astonished that your department is unable to provide information about interpreting assignments at UK courts and tribunals that are being fulfilled outside the FWA contract with Capita. We have repeatedly been told by the minister Helen Grant and by the MOJ that the contract has in its first year achieved substantial savings. It is difficult to take such claims seriously when the calculations by which they have been made have failed to take into account such vital factors as the extra costs incurred due to the failure of Capita to provide interpreters at court or the collapse of cases due to these interpreters' incompetence. Apparently no accurate data is available about these costs. And now it seems that another important piece of information is too difficult or too expensive to ascertain (or at least share).
I would have thought that in order to judge whether the new system for booking interpreters represented a saving such information would be absolutely essential, but then I am not a clever politician or senior civil servant so no doubt am failing to take into account something very important. If that is indeed the case, would you perhaps be kind enough to enlighten me?
Kind regards
John McCarthy MA, BA, DPSI (Law), NRPSI
