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Voting by Prisoners

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on obtaining the debate and on seizing upon the issue. I served on the Centre for Social Justice task force on prisons, chaired by our former friend Jonathan Aitken, and we discovered absolutely no demand from prisoners for that so-called right. Indeed, it was never an issue in the British prison system until the lawyers got hold of it through the European convention on human rights, and to that extent it is completely irrelevant to the real issues that face our prison system and the prisoners in it.