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Voting by Prisoners

This has been a very interesting debate, and rather unusual for me. I have to confess that in most debates, I arrive knowing what I think on the subject, sit here waiting for my chance to say what I think, say what I think and then vote accordingly. On this subject, which is so complicated, I find that my views have shifted during the debate. My views on prisoner voting have shifted very slightly. I am still of the view that all people convicted and given a prison sentence should lose their right to vote, but I was much struck and influenced by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who suggested that in the last six months of a sentence, as part of the rehabilitative process, the Parole Board or whatever is the right authority might give a person back that right if they were showing signs of becoming a good citizen. I have therefore changed my position. I still believe that all convicted prisoners should lose that right, but I am open to persuasion on the possibility of restoration of the vote in the last six months of a sentence. Before I came to the debate, I was of the view that if the European Court imposed fines, we should simply refuse to pay them and challenge it to send a gunboat up the Thames to extract the money from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I would say good luck to it in that—I have tried to do so for my constituents on several occasions and so far not been very successful. That was my view before, but I was persuaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell), who is no longer in his place, that we who believe in the rule of law and who want the laws that we pass in this place to be respected cannot allow a precedent to be created whereby it is okay to pick and choose which laws we obey and which judgments we accept. If we believe that the Hirst judgment is intolerable, we should go to the root of the problem and not try to evade the particular case.