Your Letters - February 2012

Signs of misunderstanding

I’m dismayed at Anne Wollenberg’s article “Signs of better access in court” (Disability Now, November 2011) and the impression that Deaf people will have more access to interpreters.

You seem painfully ill-informed about the UK’s sign language profession and the way the current Government buys services to the detriment of some niche groups.

Thanks to the Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI), there are now minimum professional standards and many spoken language interpreters are refusing to compromise with this agreement, as are many sign language interpreters. This is resulting in less access, not more.

You seem to have relied too heavily on the sub-contractor of the language services agreement – in this case, Clarion. For example, there has never been a six-week booking time for interpreters, either now or in the last few years. Quite often, bookings are filled within a week, sometimes even on the day. This is due to changing conditions and the increase in numbers of registered interpreters, rather than because of the work of one agency.

Second, some courts and police authorities, such as the London Metropolitan Police, have for many years had lists of approved and experienced interpreters, and many of the other British Sign Language (BSL) agencies have long experience doing legal work.

Third, you say that “interpreters working with deaf and disabled people have been told their working conditions will stay the same.” This isn’t true. As part of its tender, Applied Language Solutions (ALS) stated it would abolish cancellation fees to save costs. As a high percentage of court work is cancelled, many interpreters are now unwilling to take court bookings for fear that they will go unpaid and not be able to get replacement work at the eleventh hour. Rates of pay have also been set lower than many experienced legal interpreters have previously been paid.

You fail to pick up on other points. First, you quote an interpreter saying that “some interpreters feel driven away from the profession, which means there are fewer good, skilled interpreters available to the deaf community.”

What this means is that the only interpreters who find the payments, terms and conditions acceptable are those with the least experience in legal interpreting. Where we used to have the most experienced interpreters working these assignments, we now face a situation with the least.  

Second, you don’t pick up the point about not relying too much on one supplier. ALS has a target of fulfilling book­ings at a rate of 98 per cent. As BSL interpreters are generally pricier, the fear is that fewer will be booked, leaving assignments unfilled and Deaf people with longer waiting times or less access to justice.

In short, this contract has never been about better access for those who use interpreters. It is about costs and savings. Deaf people, part of a little-understood niche commun­ity, have been put together with speakers of other languages under a one-stop-shop framework.

Did you really think that Deaf people would gain better access to justice as a result of this contract? Not only have spoken language interpreters got a bad deal, so have sign language interpreters and the communities they serve.
Jennifer Smith, by email

New doctors of death?

Once again, we’re having to justify our existence because of the one-sided opinions of a vocal but small minority.

What the so-called Commission on Assisted Dying is proposing is little more than a modern-day version of Nazi Germany’s notorious Aktion T4 programme. Initially this also had “safeguards”, where three doctors had to write a red cross on a patient’s medical records before condemning them to death. This was later deemed “unnecessary”, leading to many thousands of disabled people being killed and becoming the blueprint for the Final Solution.

Any ICU consultant or oncologist will tell you that it is virtually impossible to predict when even the most seriously ill of patients will die. So how does the Commission select those eligible to participate?

The Commission also says that the people who wish to end their lives must be of sound mind. Who decides this? Does this mean that someone deemed not able to decide will have that decision made for them?

We have good quality palliative care in this country, and much is done to make the final days of the terminally ill as comfortable as possible. Anything more will lead to a slippery slope and play into the hands of those who see the disabled as a luxury society can no longer afford.
Chris Channon, by email

You won't fool the children of the revolution

Peter White writes of the need for a radical solution to the apparent co-opting of disability activists by those in political power (“Mood music out of tune”, Disability Now, November 2011).

It already exists. Groups such as Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network, and Black Triangle join radical bloggers to campaign against disablist government policies and practices.

Aided by new media such as Facebook, they organize campaigns and actions, attacking ATOS [the UK’s leading occupational health service provider], the Department for Work and Pensions and even the disability charities, to point out their complicity in the biggest attack on disabled people in living memory.

The most persistent campaigners are students, young unemployed people and other disabled people, mainly but not exclusively aged 30 years or younger. It is heartening to witness.

As someone well past my 30th year, I am proud that DPAC and others are “making the most enormous fuss outside the tent”. Other activists like me remain mulishly awkward in banging the same drum from within the tent. We need both kinds of activism if we’re going to make a difference. Both forms of challenge take huge amounts of energy and courage, but together they can be highly effective.

We also need more disabled politicians. I am a political candidate in the May 2012 Greater London Authority elections. Along with other activists, it is my task to effect party policy change, so that when Labour returns to power it will support the rights of disabled people. I’d like to hear from other party members about working together. If you’re interested, get in touch.
Kirsten Hearn, by email