Oral Answers to Questions

David Crausby Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I do not think that anyone in government, including my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, is under any illusion about the popularity of the proposal to be introduced. We are under legal obligations which no one is suggesting we should repudiate. As I often had to explain when I practised law to dissatisfied litigants who had just lost a case that they would have preferred to win, one can get into more trouble if one seeks to define it. If my hon. Friend wishes really to enrage his constituents and mine, he runs the risk of taking a decision that will result in thousands of prisoners being given compensation for their lost rights and in tens of millions of pounds of expenditure incurred by the taxpayer. We are in government, I am afraid, as I often find myself saying to our Liberal Democrat colleagues, and we have to act responsibly, whatever our inner feelings about the wisdom of the judgment that has been reached in the Court whose jurisdiction we still accept.

[Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State for Justice considering any additional precautions regarding the postal vote for prisoners because, after all, we are dealing with criminals?

[Mr Clarke]

At the moment, without anybody making any fuss at all, people on remand have been casting postal votes from prison, and have probably been doing so, as far as I am aware, throughout my political career. That is also the case for people who have been convicted but have not been sentenced, including individuals convicted of serious offences. Not many of them bother to do so, and I am not aware that they have ever made a significant difference to the result in a single constituency, but the fact is that we have to address the consequences of this judgment. We propose that, even for those people with a sentence of less than four years, there should be judicial discretion to remove the right to vote as part of the punishment in appropriate circumstances.

All of this can be debated when it comes up, but I urge Members on both sides of the House not to go too far beyond expressing understandable annoyance, and not to begin to commit themselves to a course that would cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds, to no particular effect.