Lord Ramsbotham
Main Page: Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Ramsbotham's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord McNally
My Lords, my senior colleagues in government are considering this matter. All that I can do is to guarantee that the expertise and experience in this House will be transferred to those colleagues.
Noble Lords
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I suspect that one of the reasons the previous Government took so long to come to no decision was that they were asking themselves, and indeed asking the public through the consultative process, the wrong question. The European Court of Human Rights laid down that every sentenced prisoner had the right to vote. Therefore the question is not who has the right to vote but who does not. In France and Germany, that is decided in court at the time of sentence by the judge according to the crime. Is that approach going to be tried in the fresh look, rather than continuing the sterile one that produced no answer?
Lord McNally
I am well aware that that is one consideration before Ministers at the moment, but it is one of a wide variety of considerations.