Voting by Prisoners
Debate between David Davis and Andrew Bridgen(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
