The Ministry of Work and Pensions (DWP) spends £ 8 million a year on translators and pays an average of £ 250 per call for non-English-language benefits.
In the past three years, the DWP has offered translation services for nearly 90 different languages, many of which are exclusively spoken in remote bags of the world by fewer than a million people.
These include 44 calls in the past three years to provide translation services for Mirpuri speakers, a specific dialect of the Pahari-Pothwari language used in parts of India and Pakistan. It has an estimated striking population of only 500,000 people worldwide.
Other rare translations include two calls for the Bassa language used by around 800,000 people in areas Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.
Official DWP figures show that there have been more than 90,000 telephone or video calls and personal meetings where translation services have been required in the past three years.
This was a total cost of £ 23.1 million and covered 88 languages.
These figures also include the interpretation of sign language that was necessary in 2,600 calls from both the claimants and the own staff of the DWP.
Many European languages such as German, French and Italian had a low number of calls that required translation services, despite considerable immigrant communities in the UK.
Official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that the Department has been spent more than £ 23 million on translation services in the past three years
Former Health Minister Neil O
“From schools and hospitals to well -being, the government now spends considerable sums of money on translation and interpretation,” Mr. O'Brien said.
'The pure range of different languages shows the challenges of managing a hyper-multicultural society.
'Some people who have paid and have little back in their entire lives can ask, why do we give benefits to people who cannot even speak English? This data also shows that some groups do much better than others when integrating.
“In general, migrants from developed and culturally comparable countries have much less chance of needing translation, or even depending on benefits in the first place.”
The most translated language in the past three years was Arabic, according to the DWP. It was good for almost 14 percent of all calls (12,819).
Romanian was second with 11,706 calls before a considerable episode to Farsi (5.714), Polish (5,725) and Kurdish Sorani (5,612) (5,612).
Other prominent recommended languages were Urdu (4,424), Ukrainian (4.422), Bengals (3,657), Bulgarian (3,228) and Slovak (3,077).
The government currently has interpretation contractors at job centers in the UK
Tigrinya, a language spoken in Northern Regions of Eritrea and Ethiopia, was placed quite high with 3,027 recorded calls.
Similarly rare languages for which the DWP provided translation services, TWI in Ghana, Senufo from northern areas of Ivory Coast, Kassonke in Mali and Bambara from parts of West Africa.
The government currently has interpretation contractors at work centers in the UK, with extra translation support that is offered via video and phone calls for these rarer dialects.
Reform MP Rupert Lowe has since called on the DWP to delete all interpretation services for foreign languages.
“Apparently we allow too many low-skilled migrants to our country who are unable to maintain themselves,” said the Great Yarmouth Parliament member.
Speaking to the release of the figures, a DWP spokesperson said: 'Every year we support millions of people through universal credit payments, with only two percent of the hundreds of millions of calls to the department that needs an interpreter in 2024 and clear rules for those who qualify For support '.
