Member News
By Lord Willoughby de Broke - 6th July 2011
Lord Willoughby de Broke urges the government to explain how it intends to "square the impossible circle" of giving prisoners the vote despite a lack of public support.
Convicted prisoners have never had the right to vote in the UK. However, the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously against this ban in March 2004.
The then Labour government appealed to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR, which in October 2005 upheld the court's original verdict. There followed a protracted period of consultation; matters moved on in June 2010 – therefore after the last election – when the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers gave the government a three-month deadline to announce changes to the blanket ban. This appears to have been dropped into the 'too difficult' file.
On 10th February this year the House of Commons debated the matter and backed a motion retaining the ban on prisoners being given the vote by 234 votes to 22. On 11th April the ECHR Grand Chamber rejected an appeal; this rejection now requires the government to introduce legislative proposals within six months to bring UK law into line with the European Convention on Human Rights by giving convicted prisoners the right to vote.
My question aims to find out what the government is doing to square this seemingly impossible circle. This government made much of the fact, during the passage of the EU Bill last month, that 'Parliament is sovereign'.
The vast majority of the British people want their elected representatives to decide this matter, not a gaggle of 47 semi-qualified legals from countries such as Andorra, Azerbaijan, San Marino and Russia, many of whose rulings appear to have been precisely calculated to enrage the British electorate.
So as Sir Humphrey Appleby might have put it: " Minister, this is, let us say, rather a knotty point…"
Lord Willoughby de Broke is an elected hereditary peer representing the UK Independence Party.
Have your say...
Please enter your comments below.