Taxpayer Spending on Court Translators Soars to £152,000 Per Day
Taxpayer expenditure on court interpreters in Britain has escalated dramatically, reaching as much as £152,000 daily amid rising numbers of foreign criminals appearing in courts. This substantial financial burden comes despite ongoing concerns about interpreter effectiveness and multiple high-profile fraud scandals involving translation services.
Unsustainable Costs and Systemic Failures
Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has urgently called for government intervention, describing court translation services as 'woefully poor, expensive and massively open to fraud'. He emphasized that 'these costs are unsustainable and need cutting back', while expressing additional concern about 'the spiralling numbers of recent migrants who are now being prosecuted for crimes committed in the UK'.
The financial data reveals a startling escalation. In 2024 alone, England and Wales spent £38.6 million on court translators – an 80% increase from the £21.4 million expended in 2020. Partial figures for the first three quarters of 2025 indicate this upward trend continues, with £17.7 million already spent UK-wide on translators for just the top ten languages during that period.
Exponential Growth Over a Decade
The 2024 expenditure represents a thirteen-fold increase compared to the period between 2005 and 2011, when daily spending averaged £11,437. Between 2020 and 2024, total spending reached £155.8 million, averaging £31.16 million annually.
Detailed yearly breakdowns show consistent growth: £21.4 million in 2020, £27.2 million in 2021, £31.7 million in 2022, £36.9 million in 2023, and £38.6 million in 2024. With 254 working days in 2024, this translated to approximately £151,900 spent daily on court interpretation services.
Parliamentary Revelations and Language-Specific Costs
These figures emerged through parliamentary questions from Independent Leicester South MP Shockat Adam, answered by Courts and Legal Services Minister Sarah Sackman. The data highlights significant spending on specific languages, with Romanian and Polish remaining the most interpreted languages throughout the five-year period, costing nearly £30 million combined.
Other languages showing dramatic cost increases include Albanian, where interpreting expenses surged from £800,000 in 2020 to £2 million in 2024, and Kurdish, which rose from £600,000 to £1.6 million during the same timeframe. The top ten languages requiring the highest spending in 2024 were predominantly Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian: Romanian, Polish, Arabic, Albanian, Urdu, Kurdish, Punjabi, Portuguese, Bengali, and Lithuanian.
Fraud Scandals and Quality Concerns
The system has been plagued by multiple scandals raising serious questions about oversight and quality control. In 2021, Mirwais Patang received a suspended sentence after being exposed as a fake court interpreter who had translated evidence in over 140 cases. Working for contracting giant Capita, Patang forged qualifications, stole a legitimate interpreter's identity, and had a friend impersonate him in court, earning at least £65,500 between 2012 and 2016.
Another case involved Kim Tran, a translator employed by the justice system for sixteen years, who was discovered in 2019 to be receiving payments from a drugs gang. Tran received a twelve-month prison sentence for attempting to deceive a court about a defendant's age in a £1 million cannabis cultivation case.
Separately, solicitor Babita Attra and her partner Alexandru Major orchestrated a scheme that defrauded the Legal Aid Agency of at least £62,889.64 by inflating word counts and costs for translating legal aid documents. Major received a three-year prison sentence in 2020, while Attra was given a two-year suspended sentence with 150 hours of unpaid work.
Parliamentary Criticism and Reform Promises
A House of Lords report last year delivered scathing criticism of court interpreting services, describing them as inefficient, ineffective, and posing 'a risk to the administration of justice'. Peers highlighted 'reports of poor-quality interpreting in the courts' and warned of 'significant jeopardy to justice for the foreseeable future' without urgent reform.
The report identified a 'clear disconnect between what the government hopes is happening, what the companies contracted to deliver the services believe is happening, and what frontline interpreters and legal professionals report is happening with interpreting services in the courts'.
Minister Sarah Sackman acknowledged that current spending includes 'off contract' requirements for rare or scarce languages that are 'more expensive to source'. She has pledged that new contracts currently being procured will provide better taxpayer value through improved data collection and the inclusion of a secondary supplier specifically for short-notice bookings.
The escalating costs and quality concerns surrounding court translation services present a significant challenge for Britain's justice system, balancing the essential need for accurate interpretation with fiscal responsibility and fraud prevention.
