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Voting by Prisoners

No, and, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind my saying so, I think that that was a rather fatuous contribution. I know that many of my close friends disagree with me on this issue—indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the former Bishop of Worcester, both of whom were my spiritual directors, disagree with me—but I reiterate that I think it perfectly reasonable that if a person puts himself outside the law, he should lose his vote when he loses his liberty. I will not, however, be joining any wholesale attack on the European Court of Human Rights. I lived in Spain under Franco, and I saw friends of mine tortured in Chile under Pinochet without the benefit of any court to stand up for their human rights. The Court has been a vital part of the infrastructure of freedom in Europe since its inception. When David Maxwell Fyfe, later a Conservative Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor, advocated its creation and drafted the original convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, he rightly saw the Court, and the Council of Europe, as a bulwark against both the atrocities of the Nazi and fascist regimes of the 1930s and the brutality of the communist thugs who ruled eastern Europe. It is true that Maxwell Fyfe was no human rights saint—he made sure that Derek Bentley hanged, and waged a ferocious anti-homosexual campaign throughout his time as Home Secretary—but Britain's instincts in seeking a European structure for freedom and signing up to the European convention on human rights were right, and are still right.