“An object lesson in how not to contract out a public service”

Today the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published its report into the Ministry of Justice’s language service contract which provides interpreters for the courts in England and Wales.

In August 2011, the Ministry signed a four year Framework Agreement for language services with Applied Language Solutions (ALS), under which all justice sector bodies could enter contracts with ALS. It expected the Framework Agreement to be worth up to £42 million a year. In October 2011, the Ministry signed a five year contract under the Framework Agreement which went live nationally on 30 January 2012. The Ministry expected the contract to cost £18 million a year. In December 2011, after the Ministry had signed its contract with ALS, ALS was acquired by Capita.

However, not all has gone well with the contract, to say the least (posts passim). The Committee concluded that the Ministry was not an intelligent customer in procuring language services, despite the risks posed to the administration of justice and to the Ministry’s reputation.

The Ministry failed to undertake proper due diligence on ALS’ winning bid. It failed to heed financial and other advice that ALS was too small and would struggle to meet the Ministry’s requirements in time. The Ministry also ignored strong opposition from the interpreter community. Interpreting is a specialised service. The procurement and later implementation might have been more effective had the strongly held views expressed by experienced interpreters and trade bodies during the Ministry’s consultation been given greater weight. The contract did not include a strong enough incentive for ALS to meet the requirements of the contract right from the start. ALS was acquired by Capita just before the contract started.

When the contract went live, Capita-ALS only met 58% of bookings and there was a sharp rise in the number of ineffective trials due to problems with interpreters. Unnecessary costs were caused to the Ministry of Justice due to the postponing of proceedings and delays which resulted in individuals being held in custody for longer periods. The Ministry was unable to quantify the additional cost to them of the failure. However, Capita has only been fined £2,200 to date for failing to meet the terms of the contract (just why does the UK continue to reward failure? Ed.).

Capita-ALS is now fulfilling more bookings, but it is still struggling to fulfil all and the Committee concerned that it may not be doing enough to recruit interpreters or to provide incentives to interpreters. The Ministry cannot be sure that all interpreters working under the contract have the required skills, experience and character, partly because it is not yet inspecting Capita-ALS as it has the right to do under the contract. Too many courts are having to find their own interpreters, meaning that the purpose of the policy, to provide one centralised system, has not been met.

Speaking on the publication of the report, Committee Chair Margaret Hodge MP said: “This is an object lesson in how not to contract out a public service.”