Coroners and Justice Bill

I shall speak also to consequential Amendment 82. Thanks to the fact that the Government have taken more than five-and-a-half years not to come to a decision about prisoners’ voting rights, I and many others have had opportunities to raise the issue in your Lordships’ House. I did so in Committee and, in raising it again, as a retired soldier reflect that this delay has been as long as World War 2. I can only thank goodness that those responsible for waging that war did not adopt the same timescale over decision-making. On Monday, during the remarkable debate initiated by my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick on extenuating circumstances related to murder, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, advised the House that it was not a party-political but a common-sense issue. I feel exactly the same about prisoners’ voting rights, which is why I make no apologies for raising it again. Perhaps I may remind the House of the timetable of the Government’s delay. In March 2004, following an appeal by John Gilbert, a prisoner, against an April 2001 High Court ban on sentenced prisoners voting, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the United Kingdom Government’s automatic blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting was in violation of European Convention on Human Rights, Protocol 1 Article 3. Here, I must declare an interest as president of UNLOCK, the National Association of Reformed Offenders, of which John Gilbert is a member. One year later, the Government appealed against that verdict but, in October 2005, the Grand Chamber upheld the European Court’s original decision. More than a year later, in December 2006, the Government initiated their first consultation on the subject, completed early in 2007. They said that they would complete consultation and propose a legislative solution early in 2008, one year later. In fact, it was not until two-and-a-half years later, in April of this year, that they published the findings of the first-stage consultation and, at same time, published a second consultation, protracted until the end September 2009. In the mean time, on 30 March this year, the Prison Reform Trust lodged a formal complaint with the European Committee of Ministers. On 5 June this year, that committee expressed, ""concern about the significant delay in implementing the action plan and recognised the pressing need to take concrete steps to implement the judgment particularly in light of upcoming United Kingdom elections which must take place by June 2010 at the latest"." That committee resumes in December. In addition, there has been further condemnation from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which has called on the UK to, ""review its legislation denying all convicted prisoners the right to vote in light of the Covenant"." What I find so extraordinary about all this is that the European Court did not say that every prisoner should automatically be allowed to vote, but that the Government must legislate on which prisoners are to be denied the vote, and state why. I suspect that one reason for the delay is that the Government have got themselves into something of a muddle because, rather than asking which prisoners should not have the vote, the first consultation asked which ones should have it, which was the wrong question. Wrong questions result in wrong answers, from which sensible conclusions are less likely to be drawn. Voting is not a privilege, nor a selective reward for those who have been judged morally decent by a Government, but a human right. Denying a prisoner the right to vote does not protect public safety and it is not an effective deterrent or a means to correct offending behaviour or assist in the rehabilitation of offenders, but it is an unjust additional punishment, imposed but not articulated by the court at the point of sentence, and bears no relation to the causes of crime. I fully accept that there are people in this country who believe that prisoners should be locked up, the key thrown away, and all human rights, including the right to vote, denied. I also accept that allowing all prisoners to vote, including those sentenced for the most appalling crimes, may be a step too far for many people to accept. However, what I suggest in this amendment, as I have on previous occasions in this House and in my contributions to both consultations, is that the decision on who should be denied the vote should be taken out of the political arena and given to the sentencers, who are in a position to judge the circumstances of each case guided by the Sentencing Guidelines Council. In other words, I am offering the Government a way out of their dilemma that is entirely in accordance with the direction of the European Court of Human Rights, the Grand Chamber and the European Committee of Ministers. My amendment seeks to encourage the Government to legislate that the determination of which crimes, or sentences, justify an additional punishment of being denied the right to vote should be both imposed and articulated by the court at the point of sentence. If the Government adopted my amendment, it would be in line with a number of our European partners, of which 18 out of 51 impose no such ban. Many others, including France and Germany, ban only some sentenced prisoners. Only Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Romania and Russia, like us, continue to ban. It is of note that even China and Iraq, whose human rights records the Government have often condemned, allow their prisoners to vote. That is the logic and the core of my case. Unfortunately, there is a subplot to the delay to which I feel I must draw attention, because it suggests that, rather than resulting from the possible muddle that I have indicated, it may actually be a deliberate decision by government. My suspicions that this may be so were aroused by an article in the Evening Standard on 8 October, which reported that Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, was, ""opposed to changing the law"," that is, on prisoners voting. It also reported that he was, ""understood to believe that there is no urgency to comply with the ruling issued five years ago … He plans to ensure there is no change ahead of polling day, expected next May"." A source close to him was quoted as adding: ""‘Complying with European rulings that effectively grant extra rights is not as important as responding in other cases … We are consulting on this, but will not be rushing to make any decisions’"." I am bound to ask the Minister whether this is a true reflection of the views of the Justice Secretary and therefore presumably of Government and, if so, whether any consideration has been given to what message such deliberate defiance of, or pick-and-mix attitude to compliance with, the law sends to the public, to prisoners imprisoned for taking a similar attitude or to officials who are meant to administer it. What would happen if everyone adopted the same attitude? I am no lawyer and do not know what the rules are in relation to them, but such an approach seems to me to be dangerously near contempt of the European Court of Human Rights, the Grand Chamber and the European Committee of Ministers. Last night, I attended the launch of the second edition of a remarkable manual produced by the International Centre for Prison Studies, entitled A Human Rights Approach to Prison Management. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock of Holyhead, in her launching speech, reminded those present of the importance that the Government attach to human rights and that the first edition, which has become a bible for Governments and prison managers around the world, reflecting what she described as their enthusiasm for a set of standards based on a human rights approach, had been launched in 2002 by the then Foreign Secretary—none other than the same Jack Straw, who, seven years later, as Justice Secretary, is now denying their human rights to prisoners in his own country. I understand that the Conservative Front Bench feel that an order allowing prisoners to vote would better come from the other place. I understand that view, but think that it would be even better if the Minister were able to accept my logic and agree to consider my amendment rather than reject it out of hand. After all, I am offering a solution to a situation which even he must admit has taken the Government an inordinately long time to resolve. I hope that the reasons he gives for the Government’s continued defiance of the law are neither electoral nor populist. As I said at the beginning, I believe that this is a common-sense and not a party-political matter. I beg to move.