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Coroners and Justice Bill

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, knows that his amendment does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of being accepted. It is a probing amendment. I admire him for continuously raising this issue and I am glad to be here to support him in doing so. As he said, this matter has been raised again and again and there is little new that can be said by either the Government or ourselves. However, I should like to mention one or two matters. First, there is something even more important than everyone’s democratic right to vote, except where there is very good reason to deprive them of their voting rights, and that is the European rule of law. I have said—this has been quoted against me by the Minister in the past—that Britain has a fine record of abiding by the judgments in Strasbourg, and so it has, but this is a disgraceful and lamentable exception which has already exercised members of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to the point where they are threatening publicity and an interim resolution at Christmas. They will be reading this debate in Strasbourg at their next meeting, just as they have looked at the past proceedings. The United Kingdom has an obligation under Article 41 of the convention to abide by the judgment in this case. It has another obligation under Article 13 of the convention to provide an effective remedy to everyone whose convention rights are violated. The Government are in breach of their duty under Article 41 and under Article 13. I do not expect everyone in the House to rejoice at the idea of prisoners getting anything at all, I am afraid, but there is a very good democratic reason why prisoners should be given the right to vote as the court has stipulated: that is, it makes politicians more sensitive to what is happening inside our prisons. If Ministers in the prison department understand that prisoners have a right to vote—let us say by postal vote, as they have in Ireland, Hong Kong and Cyprus—they may be more sensitive to the conditions within prisons and the needs of prisoners. It is wrong for prisoners to have their other civil rights taken away in addition to the deprivation of liberty except for very good cause. There is an argument for saying that those who are guilty of the most heinous crimes should have their civil rights taken away, especially on the recommendation of a court that has tried them—that is part of what is behind the amendment—and one can understand the need for a proportionate response, compatible with human rights, in that context. But to continue a blanket exclusion of any right to vote by any prisoner in custody for any crime whatever is completely unjustified. As the noble Lord said, we are in the minority in Europe in perpetuating that and, even worse, we are in breach of a clear judgment of the court. That is as bad as if it were a contempt of court in this country because Ministers of the Crown were disobeying the binding judgment of a domestic court. I have nothing to say in favour of the attitude that the Ministry of Justice and the Government as a whole have put forward. They are simply dragging their feet for as long as they possibly can, up to the next election, for fear of alienating the tabloid media that will attack them for being the prisoners’ friend. That is completely unjustifiable and it is time that this country brought our law into conformity with the binding judgment of the European Court. For those reasons, I support what is behind the amendment. I hope that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition will not give a knee-jerk reaction to what is proposed. I remind them that the European convention was supported in 1949 to 1950, not by Labour but by the Conservatives. It was Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, Maxwell Fyfe and John Foster, the former head of my chambers, who led the campaign in the European movement. It was the Conservative Government, not the Labour Government, who accepted the first optional protocol, which has voting rights within it. So it was not the work of Labour—Labour sought to keep it out when they ratified the original convention. It was the Conservative Government who came to power in 1951 who accepted the first optional protocol. The Conservative Party stands for the rule of law as part of a deep conservative tradition which quite transcends any populist ideas about prisoners’ rights. I very much hope that the Official Opposition will seek to persuade the Government to abide by their treaty obligation and by the court’s judgment in this case.