If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will come to that point—I am barely halfway through and will go on for a fair bit longer.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) talked about participation in the online survey. As the Ministry of Justice had co-operated fully, we took the view that it would not be appropriate to invite court staff to submit further evidence via the online forum set up by the Select Committee. We took that action because the civil service management code and the Osmotherly rules state that officials
“should not take part in research projects or surveys designed to establish their personal views on Government policies”.
We considered it right and proper to follow those rules.
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) referred to the adequacy of the previous system. Setting aside my own experience, I can say that the system was inefficient because an MOJ audit found it to be risky, and the National Audit Office agreed that it was inadequate and did not provide good value for money.
The right hon. Gentleman also referred to due diligence, and I can tell him that the procurement process was fair and competitive and that due diligence checks were carried out. However, lessons must be learned from the comments made by the Justice Committee and the NAO, and those from our own assessment. Along with other hon. Members, he raised the suitability of ALS. ALS had a background in the sector, and we felt that it had the capacity to expand to meet our needs, but, of course, that was not the case.
A number of Members have mentioned inefficiencies in trials and the disruption and costs that have flowed from ineffective trials. Magistrates courts listed more
than 80,000 trials in the first and second quarters of 2012. Just 345—0.4%—were unable to proceed because of interpreter problems. Although I absolutely acknowledge that it is not good for any trial not to proceed, contingency plans were put in place to make sure that disruption was as small as possible.
[Jim Sheridan in the Chair]
Quality of service has been a recurring theme. We are satisfied with the quality of the interpreters being used, but, as I mentioned, there will be an independent evaluation this year, and we will update the Justice Committee in the autumn on its progress.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith mentioned the cost of cases not going ahead. I am sorry that he has had so much trouble getting a satisfactory response. I am not sure whether I will do much better today, but I always like to try when I am facing him. All I can say is that courts deal with thousands of cases every day. Some cases do not go ahead, often for a variety of reasons, and calculating the cost could take a disproportionate amount of time and money.
The future is important. It might be worth saying that the NAO agreed that our procurement process was fair and competitive and that the contract should be fully implemented. Our review identified a number of processes that have since been improved.