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Voting by Prisoners

My point is that this external pressure is useful, as it repeatedly questions what our understanding of human rights should be. It is too easy for us to get locked into a narrow definition and understanding of those rights that constantly looks to the past. That is what will happen if we simply sit within our own jurisdictional context and fail to look at what is going on in the wider world. It has also been suggested that the European Court is making some poor-quality decisions. Questions have been raised about the qualifications of some of the judges and their weakness. Points have also been raised about different sentencing systems in different convention countries. Although I absolutely accept that all of that is true, it should not provide a reason on its own to weaken the overall authority of the convention and the institutions in place to police it. The convention may well not be a perfect framework, but as things stand, it offers one of the best protections of human rights that we have. I strongly agree with the Attorney-General and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) that the convention will be weakened if we start to pick and choose which bits of the Court's findings we like or dislike. How can we expect other countries not to pick and choose if we start to do so ourselves? How can we expect prisoners not to pick and choose which laws they do or do not agree with if we do not seek to follow the rule of law?