VOTES FOR CONVICTS - Nov 2010

Following the government announcement last week I have received a large number of emails from constituents outraged at the prospect of giving convicted prisoners the right to vote.

First let’s dispel the myth that this has anything to do with the European Union: it hasn’t. Rather it is all down to the European Human Rights Convention, a treaty we signed up to immediately after the Second World War.  The judges in the court that interprets the treaty ruled some years ago that the UK’s blanket ban on all convicted prisoners voting, was a violation of their human rights and that the UK should amend the law to rectify this. The last government concluded a consultation in 2007 on how we might comply with the court judgement; but it didn’t actually do anything to comply with it. That duty now falls to this present coalition government. It is not something about which we have any enthusiasm, but there is a very significant risk arising from continuing to ignore the ruling: one thing worse than having to give convicts the vote, is having to give it to them plus financial compensation for not having complied with the ruling sooner. This is the danger that we are now in.

My personal view is that the treaty has long outlived its usefulness; the judges which interpret it are out of touch with what British people consider to proper rights and liberties; and that the best thing that we could do is to withdraw from the Convention entirely.  Given the make-up of this present coalition government however, there is no prospect of pursuing such a controversial course of action. I would not want to risk the stability of the coalition by advocating such an agenda.  I can live with the prospect of convicts voting, even though I do not approve of it. The coalition has many much more important things to be getting on with.

Some of my colleagues have been apoplectic at the prospect of prisoners voting, they should ‘chill out’.  I have been a prison visitor for years both at HMP Wandsworth and more recently at The Scrubs. It is not the cushy number often characterised by our tabloid press.  I have never met a prisoner who counted his loss of the right to vote as one of the privations of imprisonment. The restoration of that right will not add one jot to their comfort. Indeed I expect the turnout among such newly enfranchised voters to be exceedingly low, if any of them bother at all.