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Voting by Prisoners

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right; I have not had time to develop the point. Quite simply, negotiations have taken place concerning the difficulties facing the Court, in which the different countries making up the Council of Europe are, in many ways, expressing the common view that the Court is not functioning properly. Quite apart from anything else, there is a backlog of 120,000 cases. This matter is therefore not being ignored by the Government; we would like to make some progress to see whether reform can be achieved.