One law for private? UK courts ignoring crime in privatised services

(not satire – it’s the UK today)

Three years ago, an unqualified court interpreter was jailed for working without qualifications and for not being registered with the profession’s professional body the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI):

Fake court interpreter jailed

Since then the coalition government has outsourced the court interpreting services – in what has been described as a disastrous privatisation.

But now a National Audit Office report states as many as 10% of court interpreters provided by CAPITA – the private contractor – are unqualified and not registered with the NRPSI.

I’m not a legal expert – but surely that means 10% of CAPITA’s staff should be facing jail time?

Unless of course in the UK there’s now one law for state employees – and another for private companies providing newly privatised services?

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Here’s a press release from the NRPSI about the use of unqualified interpreters:

Increased use of unqualified interpreters will backfire

And you can read more about the whole sorry saga of the privatisation of court interpreting in these two previous blog posts:

How Delboy hoodwinked ministers out of £300m – UPDATE

Meet the activists standing up to government bullying and privatisation. Court interpreters!

Thanks especially to Linguist Lounge for the information on this:

British Justice. Whatever happened to it?

And for regular updates on the court interpreting fiasco, you should follow @Dutch_interpret on Twitter.

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Please feel free to comment.

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