Voting Eligibility (Prisoners)

Gerald Howarth Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

It is time to call a knight of the realm. I call Sir Gerald Howarth.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

In thanking you, Mr Speaker, and in congratulating my right hon. Friend, may I suggest to him that it is an affront to the British people that judges from such A-list countries as Andorra, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg should be seeking to usurp the judgments of this sovereign Parliament? In so doing, they have, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) implied, discredited themselves. It is not we who are discredited by this judgment; it is they who have discredited the Court.

[Chris Grayling]

I know that my hon. Friend has strong views on these matters. What I would say as Lord Chancellor is that it is important always to remember that judges, whoever they are and in whichever court they are, be it the European Court or a national court, have the right to reach the decisions they reach. We may violently disagree with those decisions, but they have the right to reach them, and it would be a sad day when they no longer had that right. Our job and duty as legislators—the job of national Parliaments such as this—is to exercise sovereignty when we wish to do so. If we do not like the decisions that judges take, we always have at our disposal the ability to change the law. My statement today indicates to Parliament that the legal precedents before it are very clear: it has the right to disagree with the decisions reached in the Court in Strasbourg, but it would be for Parliament to decide whether it wishes to exercise that sovereignty.