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Voting by Prisoners

I support the motion, particularly the part noting that this House should be the place where legislative decisions of this nature are made. There have been a number of contributions from learned Members, but I should like to take the debate in a different direction. I read with interest the report, ““Voting by convicted prisoners: summary of evidence””, of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which states at paragraph 4:"““We took the evidence summarised in this Report with a view to exploring the current legal position, not with a view to questioning whether extending the right to vote to convicted prisoners in certain circumstances would be philosophically, morally or politically justifiable.””" Those words are important because those are exactly the kind of judgments that our constituents expect us to make and to use in the Chamber. However sophisticated or complicated the arguments get, this is about a basic belief system and whether giving prisoners the right to vote is right or wrong. I take the view that someone who has committed a serious crime or series of crimes and who has been incarcerated, apart from the exclusions that have been mentioned already, should lose that right. I am not prepared to flinch from that position and I shall tell hon. Members why. The general public might not wish to discuss the details of the principle of proportionality put forward by Aidan O'Neill and they might not be too concerned about Lord Mackay's conclusion that the right to vote is not an absolute right, but they know instinctively when something is right or wrong. I believe that the public think it is wrong to give prisoners the vote.