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Voting by Prisoners

I beg to move,"That this House notes the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst v the United Kingdom in which it held that there had been no substantive debate by members of the legislature on the continued justification for maintaining a general restriction on the right of prisoners to vote; acknowledges the treaty obligations of the UK; is of the opinion that legislative decisions of this nature should be a matter for democratically-elected lawmakers; and supports the current situation in which no prisoner is able to vote except those imprisoned for contempt, default or on remand." The motion stands in the names of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and, of course, myself. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity today to have this debate. There have been many important debates in this slot, but I lay claim to this one being unique, because it gives this House—not the Government—the right to assert its own right to make a decision on something of very great democratic importance, and to return that decision to itself. The motion before the House about prisoner votes splits cleanly into two parts. First, is the requirement to give prisoners the vote sensible, just, right and proper? Secondly, who should decide? Should it be the European Court of Human Rights, or this House on behalf of the British people? Let me start with the substantive question: should prisoners be given the vote? I yield to no one in my commitment to the defence of the ancient freedoms and rights of this country, and I hope the House accepts that, but there is an important point about not confusing the rights that are properly held by everybody who is a British citizen or who lives in our country with those much more circumscribed rights that are given to prisoners. Prisoners of course have rights—the right to be treated decently, not to be ill treated, to be fed, and to be kept warm, given shelter and clothing—but those rights do not extend to the same rights of a free British citizen. When someone commits a crime that is sufficiently serious to put them in prison, they sacrifice many important rights: not only their liberty, of course, but their freedom of association, which is also guaranteed under the UN charter of human rights and the European convention on human rights, and their right to vote. The concept is simple and straightforward: ““If you break the law, you cannot make the law.”” The European Court of Human Rights argues that that is a blanket rule—that is its rather pejorative term. But, actually, that is untrue, and the Court is ill informed in saying so, because three categories of prisoner are excluded from losing the right: remand prisoners, contempt of court prisoners and fine defaulters. None of those loses the vote, and for different reasons. The remand prisoner does not because they have not been convicted or sentenced, so it is inappropriate for them to lose it until they are sentenced. That is a logical exception. The other two do not lose it because their crimes are below the threshold of seriousness that we judge means that they lose the civic right to vote.