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Voting by Prisoners

Yes, it will. One of the difficulties that the Government face, and which those arguing the case in the Grand Chamber faced, was the previous jurisprudence of the Court, where the article had been misconstrued well beyond its original purpose, to give rise to individual rights that the framers of the convention had never intended should come into being. If there is a change in the approach of the Strasbourg Court, as there ought to be in light of the motion—assuming that it carries if there is a vote tonight—and if the Strasbourg Court were arrogantly and excessively to continue to seek to appropriate to itself the right to legislate for the people of the United Kingdom, the Government and the House would have to look again at the matter. In those circumstances, it would be difficult to see what properly could be done other than to repatriate the right of the United Kingdom to have sole jurisdiction to decide the human rights of its citizens in its domestic courts, as a number of hon. Members have suggested. For the present, however, what is necessary, and all that is necessary from those on both sides of the debate—from those who support the existence of the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court and those who do not, and from those who believe that we ought to be party to the European convention on human rights and those who do not—is that the motion receives support across the House, so that we make clear the position of the people of the United Kingdom through their elected representatives. For those reasons, I commend the motion to the House. I shall vote for it and I urge hon. Members of all parties to lend it their support.