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Coroners and Justice Bill

Briefly, I immensely admire the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in raising this matter. The issue is not what the public would want or what tabloid editors would say, but whether we are going to be loyal to a determination of the European Court and to our treaty obligations. Vox populi is not vox parliamentari, and should not be so. The Government, for the basest of motives—and I accept that over 12 years they have done many splendid things—have kept this matter back. That goes for the Opposition as well. There is one argument, additional to that put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, that we should bear in mind with regard to the rightness of the act of giving votes to persons in prison. Persons are sent to prison because they have acted in such a manner and their conduct is so intolerable that they have been placed outside the walls of society, but with the intention some day that they should come back to society as persons who have redeemed those offences. Those persons still remain citizens, and it is right and proper that they should be reminded not only that they have responsibilities as citizens but that they have rights as well. This is one way of driving that message home.