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Voting by Prisoners

The hon. Gentleman takes a perfectly reasonable position. I totally disagree with him, but he is a principled man and he makes an important point. The bottom line for me is that there would be less shame in leaving the European convention on human rights than in giving prisoners the vote. He may disagree with that, but it is the line that I would take. What people do in other countries is up to them. I would like to stay in the convention, but we are dealing with a court that has gone wrong. It is clearly not functioning properly. It has a backlog of tens of thousands of unresolved cases. Many of its so-called judges have no legal training at all; they are probably less qualified than me to make judgments on these things. How has it come about that we, in a sovereign Parliament, have let these decisions be taken by a kangaroo court in Strasbourg, the judgments of which do not enjoy the respect of our constituents?