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Voting by Prisoners

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for how he is articulating his powerful case. Does he not agree that, with hindsight, it is rather unfortunate that such a debate did not take place? When we were first confronted with the problem we had only the Hirst judgment, but since then we have had a number of further judgments without the UK Parliament's having had an opportunity to influence how the Court's jurisprudence evolved. He may recall that I asked for such a debate when we were in opposition.