John Humphrys asks: should MPs or human rights judges decide whether Britain should allow its prisoners the right to vote?
David Cameron’s immediate headache with Europe is over the almost impossible business of agreeing a budget for the European Union to last the next seven years. Before Christmas he’ll also have to wrestle with the latest attempts to rescue the eurozone and how that might affect Britain. But he’s also got another tricky little matter to settle: how to respond to a European court’s ruling that Britain must allow some of its prisoners the right to vote. The issue is: should Parliament or the Courts decide?
For once this conflict with Europe has nothing to do with the EU. The court in question is not an EU court but the European Court on Human Rights, the child of another European institution, the Council of Europe, set up very much as a British brainchild after the Second World War. The noble aim was to prevent the grotesque denial of human rights that had disfigured the continent before the war from being repeated. The Court ruled some time ago that it was illegal for Britain to impose a blanket ban on prisoners having the right to vote and demanded that the government rectify the situation pronto.
Inevitably, this raised a storm of protest in this country, led by parts of the press that quickly spotted how this issue stirred up a host of strong feelings – about being ‘soft’ on prisoners, being told what to do by ‘foreigners’ and having the sovereignty of Parliament challenged by judges. All the major parties reaffirmed their opposition to giving prisoners voting rights and the Prime Minister said that the very idea “makes me physically sick”.
However, Mr Cameron’s Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, pointed out that we were legally bound to abide by the decisions of the court even if we didn’t agree with them so we had better think what we wanted to do. The court itself demanded a response by this week and so the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, duly gave it on Thursday.
Mr Grayling passed the buck back to Parliament. He published a bill with essentially three options in it. The right to vote could be restored to prisoners serving sentences of less than four years; or to those serving less than six months; or the status quo of a blanket ban on prisoners voting could be maintained. (In fact it isn’t quite a blanket ban: prisoners on remand do have the vote). Furthermore he proposed that a joint committee of both houses of parliament should first consider the bill before it actually came to a vote. So the settling of the issue could well be a long time off but at least the government has responded to the court’s demand that Britain look at the matter again.
Whenever the decision is actually taken it seems likely (on previous showing) that parliament will put two fingers up to the court and reaffirm the ban on voting. That is what Mr Grayling said that he, personally, would prefer. But he recognised that to go this route would create a confrontation. He said: “I take the obligation to uphold the rule of law seriously. Equally, it remains the case that parliament is sovereign and the Human Rights Act explicitly recognises the fact. The current law passed by parliament remains in force unless and until parliament decides to change it. Nobody can impose a solution on parliament but the accepted practice is that the United Kingdom observes its international obligations.”
The consequences of Britain deciding to defy the court could involve fines being imposed on it and very expensive compensation claims by prisoners arguing that they were being denied human rights upheld by a court whose jurisdiction Britain recognised.
So it looks as though Britain may be heading for a constitution conflict on the issue. For it to defy a court it recognised would not only be unprecedented but would be a blunt statement to the world that Britain no longer believed in the international rule of law, despite having been for so long one of its staunchest advocates. But for it to fall into line with the court’s ruling when this was clearly against parliament’s own view of the matter would seem to many to be an abandonment of its own sovereignty.
There are, of course, ways through this thicket. Because parliament’s sovereignty remains supreme, it is free to extricate itself from the problem in a wholly lawful way simply by repealing the Human Rights Act and removing itself from the European Convention on Human Rights and thus from the jurisdiction of the court. But this would mean leaving the Council of Europe, Britain’s own creation, and this, in theory, would threaten its membership of the European Union. To some this might seem a small price to pay, even no price at all; but it is hardly a decision to be taken lightly and surely not simply on the relatively minor issue of whether or not prisoners should have the right to vote.
Others suggest that the way through would be to abide by the court’s ruling, at least in the short term, but seek to rein in the powers of the court. Many people believe that the court has stretched its own mandate far beyond what was originally envisaged when it was set up and that it needs to be reformed and put back in its box. Getting agreement on this, however, would be no easy matter.
But what of the issue itself? Those in favour of denying all convicted prisoners the right to vote argue that by having committed a crime such prisoners have forfeited their civil rights and that denying them the vote is a wholly reasonable part of their punishment. Others, though, say that such an attitude is a vestige of an approach otherwise long-ago abandoned – that criminals should lose not only their freedom but all rights within society. Advocates of giving prisoners the vote say that loss of liberty is sufficient punishment and that maintaining a connection with civil society, including having the right to vote, is a valuable part of rehabilitation which ought to be society’s principle aim in dealing with prisoners.
Cynics shrug. To them the whole thing is about nothing at all. Even if we give prisoners the right to vote, they say, those banged up won’t exercise the right. When it comes to voting why should they be any less apathetic than the rest of us?
What’s your view?
- Do you think all prisoners should be denied the right to vote or do you think some should have the right restored?
- Do you think the issue is one the European Court on Human Rights should have the power to adjudicate or not?
- Do you think parliament should be ready to defy the court or not?
- Do you think it matters or not if Britain reneges on its commitment to uphold international law?
- Should Britain seek to rein in the powers of the ECHR?
- And do you think Britain should go the whole hog and ‘unsign’ the European Convention on Human Rights?
