Prisoners (Voting Rights)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

As always, my hon. Friend speaks not only for his constituents but for Britain. Lots of people would agree with him. As his local police commander will have said—and as mine has said—“Philip, everyone we catch and convict is a volunteer.” No one is forced to go to prison for committing offences. Indeed, it is difficult to go to prison nowadays, under the liberal criminal justice regime that the coalition Government are starting to pursue.

There are therefore a number of ways in which the Government can respond to the European Court ruling, other than just caving in with the four-year rule. Primarily we need a proper parliamentary debate on the issue, so that colleagues can debate the pros and cons and be given the opportunity to vote to maintain the status quo. That would satisfy the European Court’s judgment that Parliament has not debated the issue. I hope that the Government will think hard about putting that before the House.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that what the Government put forward as a justification for the measure—namely that if they did not implement it there would be a substantial cost to the taxpayer, in millions of pounds in damages—was a specious and unjustified argument? Just before Christmas I spoke to an official of the European Court of Human Rights, who confirmed that the talk about millions of pounds of compensation being payable if we did not comply was a load of nonsense.

[Mr Hollobone]

As a Member of the Council of Europe my hon. Friend is closer to many of the issues than I am. I share his scepticism about the figure of £160 million, which we were given as the possible amount of compensation. I invite the Minister to justify where that figure has come from. It would be extremely irresponsible for the Government to bandy around those figures when they have no realistic basis in fact. I understand that there are 2,500 outstanding court cases, pending a resolution of this issue with the European Court. I would like to know how the Government established the basis of compensation for each of those 2,500 cases, because I strongly suspect that the Government may be guilty of making up those numbers and in danger of misleading Parliament.

This is very serious issue. The British public do not want prisoners to be given the right to vote. Many other countries in Europe successfully operate blanket bans and have not been challenged in the European Court. My constituents and many other people up and down the land are furious that once again the Government seem to be bending over to the human rights lobby to introduce a measure, which is frankly inappropriate to the balance of crime and justice in this country.

Once again, we seem to be going soft on criminal justice issues. The British people will not put up with that for much longer. Here is a golden opportunity for the new coalition Government to say, “We are going to put Britain first.” If we have to pull out of the European convention on human rights, let us consider that and possibly do so. That would certainly have a lot of support in the country. However, if we are going to respond to the appeal judgment from the European Court there are many ways of doing it other than simply applying the four-year rule, which will not address my constituents’ concerns. I say to the Government with confidence that if they continue to press this issue in the House, they will be defeated.