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Voting by Prisoners

My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point. If she looks around other European countries, she will find a great deal of variety in approach. Some countries do not allow any convicted prisoners to vote, although they might well be in serious difficulty as a result of the Hirst judgment. The Irish Government, for example, changed the law and gave their prisoners the vote. Others lay down differential criteria, and it seems clear that the Court is influenced by the consideration of whether those convicted to very short terms of imprisonment should retain the right to vote and those with longer terms of imprisonment should lose it. Four years, for example, has usually been regarded in our judicial system as the benchmark that separates a long sentence from a medium or short sentence. That is one reason why such benchmarks might play a role, and used to play a role, in providing some definition.