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Voting by Prisoners

There is no point in the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head—he should read the history. I am sure the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) agrees with me. The fact is that European judges have no accountability to the British public in the way that English judges do, and nor do Strasbourg judges have any accountability to the House. I suggest that the Strasbourg Court is the difficulty. Lord Hoffman—a liberal by any definition—said something very important on that. He said:"““In practice, the Court has not taken the doctrine of the margin of appreciation nearly far enough. It has been unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules on Member States. It considers itself the equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States, laying down a federal law of Europe.””" He concluded, and I agree:"““The problem is the Court; and the right of individual petition, which enables the Court to intervene in the details and nuances of the domestic laws of Member States.””" In November, I asked the Justice Secretary about the possibility of withdrawing from the European convention on human rights, so that we do repeat these ridiculous exercises in which we are asked, for example, to consider whether prisoners should have the right to vote. He responded by saying that a proposal to withdraw was not in the coalition agreement—it was settled Conservative party policy for most of the previous Parliament to withdraw from the convention—but he also promised me that a commission would consider drawing up a Bill of Rights and the thorny question of the convention. I should therefore like to ask the Attorney-General a specific question. Will he give an undertaking that the commission referred to in the coalition agreement will be set up by the end of this year? Will he consider reforms—if not full withdrawal from the convention—to the Court to improve its personnel and the competence of its judges, which is seriously in question? Will such reforms ensure that those judges are told to give wider discretion to English courts when decisions are made on matters affecting English people?