Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Ben Gummer and Baroness Burt of Solihull

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) got to the heart of the matter when he said that two things were at stake, one of principle and one of politics. I will deal first with two matters of principle on which I do not think the House has yet touched. The first has vexed moral and political philosophers for centuries: the difference, and combat, between freedoms and rights.

Many Members have rightly called the House’s attention to the thought of rapists and murderers being given the vote and what that would be like for our constituents. I wonder whether I can place a more positive image of voting in the minds of Members: that of the long queues that formed in the first democratic elections in South Africa, or in the elections that followed the fall of socialist regimes in the eastern bloc, and in those only a few weeks ago in southern Sudan when the people there found their independence. Those people were expressing a freedom; for the first time they were expressing their freedom from tyranny.

Voting is an expression of freedom, but it is more than that: it is the constructive act that makes freedom possible. Those who commit crimes deny freedom to others, either by the force of violence or by inhibiting the actions of people and communities through fear. It is a right and proper mode of retribution for a community to deprive such an individual of their freedom, because that is what he or she has done to others. Surely, therefore, it goes against the essence of the retributive punishment being meted out by the state on behalf of the community if the individual is able to participate in that community while in prison. On that simple issue of principle, I cannot understand, despite all the elegant arguments put forward, why prisoners should be granted that most special and precious freedom, which is an expression of the freedom of those in the community.

[Lorely Burt]

The hon. Gentleman is making a cohesive argument, but I ask him to reflect on what we are doing here. We are not taking away a freedom from someone, but a human right. That is the only difference between us.

[Ben Gummer]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point, because it brings me to the second matter of principle that I want to talk about, but I do not want to get into the dangerous territory of discussing rights and freedoms. I am trying to explain why I believe that voting is traditionally a freedom in this country, not a right. That is in part why we have got into this mess.

Taking the European Court of Human Rights on its own terms, those Members who have looked at the comments of the dissenting judges will know that they are very telling. The main point of dissent is that protocol 1 of article 3 is not a substantive individual right. It is one that forced contracting states to provide free and fair elections, but the bounds by which the states make those decisions are left to them.

What worries me, as I said earlier, is the encroachment of jurisprudential evolution on the Court’s decision making, which is changing the nature of the convention. It is not the convention that is at fault, but the Court. Here we come to the key point, because the reason we have to listen to the Court’s judgment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) so rightly pointed out, is that the Wilson Government decided in 1967 to allow petitioning in person to the European Court and for its decisions to hold force of law in this country. That changes entirely our relationship with the convention. The problem is with the Court, not with the convention, and that is not my point but one that Lord Hoffmann has made with far greater eloquence and force.

There is a subsidiary point, which has been brought up several times in the debate, about the rightness of decisions. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is entirely correct that the shameful denial of service by homosexuals in the military was wrong, but the fact that the European Court judged it to be wrong does not make the existence of the Court itself right. It is right that we reflect on the ability of this House to make the right decision at the right time, even if other courts prompt us to do so.

I shall make quickly two other points about the political issues and why we need to face the matter now. First, I yield to no one in my passion for penal reform, rather like my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry). I am a proud patron of the Longford Trust, and, with the fantastic plans that the Lord Chancellor has laid before the House, we are about to embark on the most significant period of penal reform since the era of Lord Shaftesbury; but, in what will be a remarkable period of reform and release for some of the most vulnerable people in our community, we will lose the public’s confidence if we start off on this footing.

Secondly, I have many problems with the European Union and I disagreed with the Lisbon treaty, but the simple fact is that many people—a majority both in this House and on the Government Benches—believe in this country’s continued membership of the European Union. This debate makes it impossible to have a clean debate about the European Union, however, because too many people understand the EU and the European Court of Human Rights to be the same thing. For those reasons, in principle and in politics, I shall support the motion.