---

Voting by Prisoners

It is certainly true that our international legal obligations may alter by virtue of what Parliament has enacted, but the current position is that we have an international obligation that, if I understood correctly from what they said, is not one from which, in its principles, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden or the right hon. Member for Blackburn would wish to resile. We are bound by it as Ministers of the Crown. However, if my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will come to that in a moment. I repeat the point that the Grand Chamber in the Hirst case commented on the lack of any substantive debate in Parliament. It must be the case, therefore, that the existence of a substantive debate—indeed, we may have to have more than one substantive debate on this issue—will be helpful to the process of finding a way through the problem that is exercising many Members of this House. However, although Members are fully entitled to express their disagreement with the judgment of the European Court—indeed, I have done so myself: I said that I consider the judgment in the Hirst case to be an unsatisfactory one, for precisely the reasons, which I will not repeat, that the right hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend articulated—the fact that we may be in disagreement does not in itself solve the problem. In order for the views of this House to be helpful, we need to demonstrate that we are engaging with the concerns of the Court and that we are not just expressing our frustrations—although I have to say that on occasion I have felt very frustrated on this issue in the last few years, and actually rather angry. Through a dialogue about what the House considers to be proper and reasonable in respect of prisoner voting, we have to see whether we can bring our weight to bear as a legislature in the development of the jurisprudence of the Court. That will give us the best possible chance of winning the challenges that may arise thereafter. As we know, given the litigiousness of those who think that there is a gravy train on which they might be able to climb, we can guarantee that, whatever we do, there will be legal challenge to it that will go back to the European Court of Human Rights for determination.