David Davis
Main Page: David Davis (Conservative - Goole and Pocklington)Department Debates - View all David Davis's debates with the Attorney General
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst v the United Kingdom in which it held that there had been no substantive debate by members of the legislature on the continued justification for maintaining a general restriction on the right of prisoners to vote; acknowledges the treaty obligations of the UK; is of the opinion that legislative decisions of this nature should be a matter for democratically-elected lawmakers; and supports the current situation in which no prisoner is able to vote except those imprisoned for contempt, default or on remand.
The motion stands in the names of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and, of course, myself.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity today to have this debate. There have been many important debates in this slot, but I lay claim to this one being unique, because it gives this House—not the Government—the right to assert its own right to make a decision on something of very great democratic importance, and to return that decision to itself.
The motion before the House about prisoner votes splits cleanly into two parts. First, is the requirement to give prisoners the vote sensible, just, right and proper? Secondly, who should decide? Should it be the European Court of Human Rights, or this House on behalf of the British people?
Let me start with the substantive question: should prisoners be given the vote? I yield to no one in my commitment to the defence of the ancient freedoms and rights of this country, and I hope the House accepts that, but there is an important point about not confusing the rights that are properly held by everybody who is a British citizen or who lives in our country with those much more circumscribed rights that are given to prisoners. Prisoners of course have rights—the right to be treated decently, not to be ill treated, to be fed, and to be kept warm, given shelter and clothing—but those rights do not extend to the same rights of a free British citizen.
When someone commits a crime that is sufficiently serious to put them in prison, they sacrifice many important rights: not only their liberty, of course, but their freedom of association, which is also guaranteed under the UN charter of human rights and the European convention on human rights, and their right to vote. The concept is simple and straightforward: “If you break the law, you cannot make the law.”
The European Court of Human Rights argues that that is a blanket rule—that is its rather pejorative term. But, actually, that is untrue, and the Court is ill informed in saying so, because three categories of prisoner are excluded from losing the right: remand prisoners, contempt of court prisoners and fine defaulters. None of those loses the vote, and for different reasons. The remand prisoner does not because they have not been convicted or sentenced, so it is inappropriate for them to lose it until they are sentenced. That is a logical exception. The other two do not lose it because their crimes are below the threshold of seriousness that we judge means that they lose the civic right to vote.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on obtaining the debate and on seizing upon the issue. I served on the Centre for Social Justice task force on prisons, chaired by our former friend Jonathan Aitken, and we discovered absolutely no demand from prisoners for that so-called right. Indeed, it was never an issue in the British prison system until the lawyers got hold of it through the European convention on human rights, and to that extent it is completely irrelevant to the real issues that face our prison system and the prisoners in it.
Mr Davis
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Indeed, if there were an argument that giving prisoners the vote would cut recidivism, cut re-offending rates and help the public in that way, I would consider the matter, but giving prisoners the vote would not stop one crime in this country, and that is after all the point of the justice system in the first place.
Let me return to the main text. Other prisoners do lose the vote, but we must understand that for someone to be sent to prison in this country in this day and age requires a very serious crime or series of crimes. There are convicted burglars and convicted violent criminals, who have never been to prison, walking the streets today, so there is a very serious threshold.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
Recently, in Northern Ireland, a young woman was given a custodial sentence for a first offence of stealing a pair of jeans worth £10. The case is being appealed, but it suggests that not every custodial sentence is given because of a very serious offence or string of serious offences.
Mr Davis
There is an old argument that hard cases make bad law, and it may well be—it sounds very likely—that that young lady’s custodial sentence will not be upheld. The general point, however, is very clear: it takes a pretty serious crime to get someone sent to prison. As a result, that person has broken their contract with society to such a serious extent that they have lost all these rights: their liberty, their freedom of association and their right to vote.
The law is not unjust. Every citizen knows that the same level of crime that costs them their liberty costs them their vote. What the Court calls a blanket rule, I call uniform justice.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend think it reasonable for the European Court of Human Rights to insist on a right for individuals if those individuals have not bothered either to register to vote or, indeed, to vote when they have not been in custody?
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It would be quite interesting to see how many prisoners have ever voted, let alone how many voted at every election in the run-up to their incarceration.
The Court also argues that the penalty is not proportionate, but again that is plainly wrong. We are not one of those countries where, when someone is convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to prison, they lose the right to vote for ever. Such places do exist. Indeed, in one state of the United States, people lose their right to vote de facto for ever, but we are not one of those places. When someone is in prison, they cannot vote; when they are released, all their civic rights are completely reinstated, meaning that that denial is an absolutely proportionate response to the seriousness of the crime. If the sentence reflects the crime, the denial of the vote also reflects the crime.
Let me be clear. In my view, convicted prisoners should not have the vote: robbery, rape, drug dealing—frankly, the crime does not matter, given its seriousness. But, despite what the Justice Secretary said the other day, violent criminals, sex offenders and drug dealers will get the vote if we accept the compromises that have been aired so far. The Government talk about a less than four-year rule, but 28,000 people convicted of serious violent crimes, sex crimes and crimes against children would be incorporated in that. Even a one-year rule would include thousands of people, many of whom will have committed serious crimes from which we would recoil.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. The right to vote underpins our democracy, but that right is a qualified right, not an absolute one. Does he agree that these qualifications should therefore be established by this Parliament, not by unelected European institutions that wish to bypass our established laws?
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on obtaining this debate and on his excellent speech, which is developing a most interesting theme. Does he agree that giving votes to any prisoners is quite incomprehensible to our constituents, who sent us here to make the rules and the laws, not to have the European Court make them for us?
Mr Davis
Of course my hon. Friend is right. One of the points about laws in a democracy is that they exist with, at the very least, the acquiescence—the consent, we hope—of everybody in that democracy. Between 75% and 90% of the population cannot understand what we are doing even considering this proposal.
Let me go back to the compromises that have been talked about. It is not my aim to put the Government in a difficult position from which they cannot escape; the issue is whether those compromises would work. The proposals put up so far—four years, one year, six months—would not work. They would not escape the threat that we have had held over us of compensation or some other form of penalty against our taxpayers. In fact, one member of the Council of Europe, Austria, did give the vote to prisoners serving less than one year, and it then appeared in the Court and was found against.
Just how ridiculous this is became clear earlier this week, when the European Commissioner for Human Rights appeared on Radio 4. Because he had said that a blanket rule would not work, he was asked what the guideline was, and he said, “A breach of electoral law.” That would put us in the ridiculous position whereby we denied the vote to somebody who broke electoral law, in however minor a way, yet gave it to the rapist and the murderer. It is so ridiculous that I cannot believe he really meant it.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that it is rather strange that we are being forced to do this by the European Court of Human Rights, many of whose own judges come from authoritarian regimes? Is it not time to withdraw from its jurisdiction?
Mr Davis
I am now going to lose the House, because I do not agree with withdrawing from the regime. I will explain why in a moment.
Let me conclude this half of my speech—I am using up too much of my time giving way—by saying that it is clear to me that our current system is appropriate, just, proportionate, simple and well understood, and we should stick with it.
The second substantive issue before us is who should decide—the European Court or these Houses of Parliament? British courts themselves are clear on the matter. They rejected the claims of Mr Hirst, the axe killer, at every stage. The High Court said in terms that this was
“plainly a matter for Parliament, not the courts”.
To those who say, “But we must obey the law”, I say that the historical task of this Parliament is to correct bad law, no matter where it comes from.
George Hollingbery
The second half of my right hon. Friend’s argument illustrates the difficulty in the motion, which seems to conflate two highly related but different issues, one of which is the right of prisoners to vote and the other is the enforceability of the European convention on human rights. As a parliamentarian, I find myself split: it is very difficult to know how I am supposed to vote once on something that asks two questions.
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend faces this issue every time he votes on a Third Reading; if he has not noticed that yet, I am sorry for him. The truth is that there are two issues, both important, in my view, and both with enormous strength behind them. If he does not feel that he can vote on the motion, perhaps he should abstain.
The Court’s authority rests solely on the European convention on human rights, which is both the source of its power and the limit of its power. When Britain signed up to the European convention on human rights, it was to help to prevent a repeat of the horrors of the second world war and of Nazism, and, indeed, the horrors of the growing Soviet empire at that point in time; it was to protect people from ill-treatment, and to protect their life, liberty, free speech, and right to a fair trial. Those are all very serious and fundamental issues. What we emphatically did not sign up for was giving prisoners the right to vote.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr Buckland
Was not the convention called the charter of fundamental rights and freedoms at that time, and have we not lost the plot in terms of its development?
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend is right—he makes a very good point. The then Labour Government well understood this when they excluded from the text the words “universal suffrage”. They did that because although we have a very wide and general suffrage and a very democratic state, we do not have universal suffrage. The Strasbourg Court has imposed judgments on Britain that are outside the original treaty. We have signed a contract; it has gone beyond that contract.
The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
The Attorney-General
I have one advantage over my right hon. Friend, which is to have been able to go and look at the archives on what happened in 1951. I think the reasons why we objected to the use of the words “universal suffrage” were twofold: first, there was some anxiety over the position in the colonies; and secondly, there was a concern about whether proportional representation would be imposed on us as a result. Once those issues were clarified and removed, the United Kingdom signed up.
Mr Davis
I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend, who is a very close friend as well, checked the travail préparatoire in which one of his predecessors—Dowson, I think—said in terms that we had general suffrage but it could not be described as universal suffrage. That is what I was resting the point on.
Since about 1978, the European Court has adopted the view that the convention was what it termed “a living instrument”. That meant that the Court could arrogate to itself the right to decide what its remit was. It did that without any mandate from this House or any other house of representatives of the member states of the Council of Europe. This has been picked up, not by some Tory or right-wing Eurosceptic, but by Lord Justice Hoffmann, an eminent judge with enormous civil liberties credentials, who said that the Strasbourg Court has
“been unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules on member states”.
Even the Court itself understands this. In the minority report, Judge Costa, the President of the Court, a man who believes in extending the powers of his own court, said that he
“accepted that the States have a wide margin of appreciation to decide on the aims of any restriction, limitation or even outright ban on the vote”
and pointed out that the judges were not legislators and should not overrule the legislatures of the Council of Europe.
I want the European Court to succeed at its main business, which is why I differed from my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). However, I do not want it to try to interfere in the business of legislatures around the European continent.
Mr Davis
If colleagues will forgive me, I am almost out of time.
So where do we go from here? If Parliament decides by a strong majority today, the Government will have to go back to the Court and tell it to think again, because it cannot deliver a third of its rulings. If this House will not provide a change in the law, it cannot deliver a change in the law. That will lead the Court to have to decide how it deals with this sort of crisis in future. Lord Justice Judge and Lady Justice Arden, and others, have predicted this crisis and pointed out that we need to have the right of recall, the right of review and the right of challenge. That is what should come out of this motion.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General was kind enough to intervene on me, I thought I would remind him that today is almost the anniversary of the day when he said the following words:
“The Government must allow a parliamentary debate which gives MPs the opportunity to insist on retaining our existing practice that convicted prisoners can't vote.”
I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now. The House should insist that this is our decision, and from this place we will not move.