The asylum interview is meant to establish what happened. Practitioners describe a process built to find inconsistency. Between those two things stands the interpreter: selected through a procurement chain, not chosen by the applicant, and often subject to no mandatory accreditation.
I interviewed immigration solicitors, barristers, a professional interpreter, and a professional standards body. All anonymised. Same finding: the same testimony can look coherent or inconsistent depending on the interpreter. The system treats that as the applicant's problem.
The chain runs from the Home Office to a contractor, to an agency, to the interpreter. Cost drives each stage. The applicant has no role in selection and no clear way to challenge interpreter quality.
One solicitor said the chain decides who will be heard and who will be marked inconsistent. When the interpreter changes, the record changes too.
Fluency alone is not enough. Asylum testimony needs dialect knowledge, persecution terminology, and cultural context. A nearest-word choice can make sense in the moment. Later, in the record, it can become an inconsistency.
A professional interpreter described the mechanism. No preparation. Complex testimony. A hearing built for speed. The interpreter makes choices. The institution creates the conditions and ignores the result.
"The duty is to interpret what is heard and understood."
The record shows what came through the procurement chain. The institution treats it as what the applicant said.
The DPSI is the main UK qualification for public service interpreters. A professional standards body said it works in practice as a basic aptitude test. Even that is rarely enforced.
There is no mandatory accreditation requirement. An agency can supply an unqualified interpreter. The applicant cannot verify it. The institution treats the resulting record the same.
Inconsistency becomes credibility. Credibility can decide the case. If the inconsistency starts with the interpreter, the system has no way to see it.
The minimum requirement: treat the interpreter as a measurable variable. Enforce accreditation. Let applicants raise concerns. Record interpreter identity and qualification beside the testimony.
Access to justice starts with whether the hearing records what the applicant said.