The Council of Europe sets next year’s elections to Stormont, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay as the date by which it expects the UK government to allow prisoners to vote.
Could prisoners get the vote for the first time in next year’s elections to the devolved parliaments and assemblies? Following a meeting on Monday of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, the group expressed:
“Profound regret that despite the repeated calls of the Committee, the United Kingdom general election was held on 6 May 2010 with the blanket ban on the right of convicted prisoners in custody to vote still in place.”
The concerns expressed came following a series of high profile rulings in Europe that have supported the principle of votes for prisoners.
In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case of a prisoner who had been disenfranchised that denying those in prison the vote breached their right to vote under Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
By December 2009, following the court’s ruling, the Council of Europe concluded:
“The Committee expressed serious concern as regards the substantial delay in implementing the judgment which creates a significant risk that the next United Kingdom general election, which must take place by June 2010, will be performed in a way that fails to comply with the Convention.”
A similar warning was again made just before the election in March this year.
In publishing its latest ruling, the Council of Europe explicitly sets next year’s elections to Stormont, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay as the date by which it expects the UK government to comply with its’ and the Court of Human Rights’ rulings. The Council of Europe further pledged to review the issue again in September. However, any failure to comply could have series consequences for the UK.
As the Telegraph has explained:
“Britian could be the first country to fall foul of new powers which came into effect earlier this month allowing non-compliance proceedings in the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg court, with potential sanctions including suspension or expulsion from the Council of Europe – a separate body from the European Union.”
Responding to the ruling, Christine O’Neil, head of Public Sector law at the Scottish based law firm Brodies commented:
“European ministers are essentially exhorting the UK to deal with this before next year’s Scottish elections.
“If action isn’t taken to change the position, it is inevitable there will be further challenges. The costs involved in dealing with applications to the court could be relatively substantial.”
For the Scottish Conservatives, its Justice Spokesman John Lamont was unequivocal:
“It would be bizarre if those who break the law got to decide who should make the law.”
And a spokesman for the Scottish Government commented:
“This [the committee’s] stance is not something we agree with or support but electoral reform is reserved.”
The calls by the Council of Europe on the issue of prisoner rights to vote may expose more fault lines among the Coalition partners. Speaking following the 2005 judgement by the European Court of Human Rights, Dominic Grieve, then the Shadow Attorney General, who now holds the position in the Government, described the proposition as “ludicrous”.
He said:
“Giving prisoners the vote would be ludicrous. If convicted rapists and murderers are given the vote, it will bring the law into disrepute and many people will see it as making a mockery of justice.”
Yet speaking in 2009, the former Lib Dem Justice Spokesman, David Howarth warned the then Labour Government:
“It is unacceptable for the government to pick and choose which human rights treaty obligations it fulfils just because it feels the issue is unpopular.”
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17 Responses to “Should prisoners get the vote?”
Simon Gethin Thomas
RT @leftfootfwd: Should prisoners get the vote? http://bit.ly/am3Y4R
CraigM
Obviously prisoners should have the right to vote. It is, however, one of the suicidal policies to support (unless you have a couple of large prisons in your marginal constituency perhaps) because it gets you very, very bad headlines (even if it would be an issue that would go away within about 10 minutes of the initial “shock horror”). Hopefully, it will prove to be a subject of much dissent within the Coalition given the Lib Dems history in supporting prisoners voting rights. However, I suspect that I, along with our disenfranchised prisoners, are whistling in the dark on this one…
Should prisoners get the vote? « The best Labour blogs
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Brian Hill
The hardest thing for anyone of us is to feel excluded from the rest of society. Poverty has that effect and prison is often a result of poverty therefore prison increases the feeling of isolation.
When a man feels he has no way back what incentive is there for him to reform? None.
Not allowing prisoners to vote is a further reminder that they are not part of society, thus the Europeans have reversed that aspect of exclusion and the reason I support giving the vote to prisoners.
David Boothroyd
It is only a blanket ban which is ruled unlawful. The COE is not ordering that all prisoners should be enfranchised, just that some should have the ability to be. It is quite clear that public opinion is generally against enfranchisement of prisoners.
The fairest way of solving the problem would be to have a default that prisoners are disenfranchised but allow sentencing judges to lift that part of the sentence if the interests of justice require it. Prisoners currently serving a sentence of imprisonment would have to be given a tribunal hearing on whether they should be enfranchised.