The wood panelling and wigs are not the first things you notice when you enter Southwark Crown Court on a soggy Tuesday. The second voice is this one. A woman in a grey blazer whispers into a microphone two seats away as a defendant sits in the glass dock with her head tilted slightly and listens through an earpiece. She doesn’t practice law. The interpreter is her. At the end of the week, she is increasingly the one who leaves with the better invoice.
It’s not a joke. For a few years now, duty solicitors have been muttering about it, half amused, half resentful. For a morning hearing, a junior barrister working on a legal aid brief might clear £46. Before lunch, the interpreter seated next to them, who was hired by a private agency at emergency rates with travel and a cancellation buffer, can easily surpass that. Nobody in the building seems quite prepared to speak out loud about its subtle absurdity.
| Subject | Court Interpreting in England and Wales |
|---|---|
| Location | Crown and magistrates’ courts across the UK, with heaviest demand in London |
| Overseeing Body | HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) |
| Total Spend on Court Translators (2024) | £38.6 million in England and Wales |
| Spend in 2020 | £21.4 million |
| Daily Spend (peak) | Up to £152,000 |
| Increase Since 2005–2011 Average | A 13-fold rise from roughly £11,437 a day |
| Top Languages in Demand | Eastern European, Middle Eastern, South Asian |
| Key Inquiry | House of Lords Public Services Committee report |
| Committee Chair | Baroness Morris of Yardley |
| Notable Critic | Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative leader |
| Notable Scandal | A fake interpreter handled 140 cases before being caught in 2021 |
| Status of Reform | Procurement underway; peers’ plea to halt was rebuffed |
When you finally see the numbers in writing, it becomes more difficult to laugh them off. In England and Wales, court translator spending reached £38.6 million in 2024, an increase of about 80% from £21.4 million in 2020. The bill has reached £152,000 on the worst days. Just the top ten languages, the majority of which were Eastern European, a few Middle Eastern, and a few South Asian, received £17.7 million between January and September of last year alone. When you compare that to the average daily expenditure of approximately £11,400 between 2005 and 2011, you can see a thirteen-fold increase in just over ten years.
Some of this might just be the result of demand catching up to reality. More non-English-speaking defendants are now processed by British courts than the system was ever intended to handle, and the interpreters themselves will tell you off-the-record that they work in an environment that practically actively encourages them to pursue private employment. This was stated by the public services committee of the House of Lords last year, using language that was unusually direct for a parliamentary report.
Peers came to the conclusion that because the official terms are so bad, the current arrangements create perverse incentives for interpreters to operate outside of the main contract. Hearings fail, cases are postponed, and interpreters suffer the consequences. Few remain for very long.
Speaking with those who have worked in these corridors gives the impression that the Ministry of Justice is not entirely aware of what is going on under its own supervision. The committee discovered a glaring disparity between what officials think the system accomplishes and what really happens in the courtroom. Peers stated that the data on complaints most likely underrepresents the true situation, in part because those most impacted by poor interpretation are, by definition, the least prepared to file a complaint in English.
Never one to mince words, Sir Iain Duncan Smith described the service as dreadfully inadequate and extremely vulnerable to fraud. On the second point, at least, he is correct. Before anyone noticed, a man without any qualifications interpreted more than 140 cases in 2021. He was given a suspended sentence and left. It’s unclear how many of those convictions are still valid.
It’s difficult to avoid feeling as though something subtly significant has slipped while observing this from a press bench. Understanding is necessary for justice, and in this case, understanding is being subcontracted to the lowest bidder at the highest cost to the taxpayer. The new procurement round is supposed to bring about reform. It’s still genuinely unclear if it alters the math or simply rearranges who benefits from the confusion.
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