The ongoing scandal in the UK relating to the outsourcing of court interpreting services to Applied Language Solutions/Capita (see this post) reached the Parliamentary select committee last week, which can watched online at: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=11582

The Justice Committee has launched a call for evidence as an online forum (kudos for being so up-to-date!) but it will close in two days, on 2 November 2012.

Below is a brief description as described on the Parliament website, and you can access the forum here:

“The Justice Committee has heard that some stakeholders may be reticent to provide formal written evidence. These may include: court and tribunal service staff; members of the judiciary and magistracy; legal practitioners and other practitioners; defendants in criminal cases and parties in civil and family cases and interpreters providing services on behalf of [Applied Language Solutions]. We would encourage these individuals to submit their experiences through this web forum using an anonymous user name.

The Justice Committee would like to hear from individuals with direct experience of the provision of interpreting and translation services by Applied Language Solutions […]. The Justice Committee would particularly like to hear about direct examples of recent performance issues (during September and October 2012) surrounding the operation of the Framework Agreement between the Ministry of Justice and [Applied Language Solutions].”