Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Jack Straw and Denis MacShane

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I understand the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s point, and hindsight is a wonderful thing. If I thought that the only thing preventing the Court from coming to a reasonable compromise was the fact that I had not organised an earlier debate, I would be happy to be taken to Strasbourg to make my apologies. He knows better than anybody that neither set of Whips was keen on such a debate, not least because it was clear that it would be impossible, particularly in the pre-election atmosphere, to have the sober debate that we are to have today.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if the matter was that important to the then Opposition, they could have had an Opposition day debate on it?

[Mr Straw]

That is true. I shall now move on.

Our motion has been carefully drafted. It is respectful of the Court and our treaty obligations, but is intended to answer one of the three objections that the majority of the Court in Strasbourg had to our so-called blanket ban—that there had not been any substantive debate on the matter in the light of modern penal policy and human rights standards. This debate is a response to that.

One cannot judge the fairness and effectiveness of penal policy with reference to just one aspect of it, such as the ban on prisoners voting. That judgment has to be made in the round. Since the Strangeways riots of 20 years ago and the Woolf report that followed, there has been a quiet revolution in penal policy. As the chief inspectors of prisons have recognised, conditions for prisoners have been transformed. Every effort is rightly made to treat prisoners with dignity, and to prepare them better for the outside world. The overall environment of our prisons stands up to comparison with any in the world, and is far above that in many European countries.

However, the exact mix must be for domestic Parliaments to decide. They have the knowledge and legitimacy to make appropriate judgments, and we have supervision by our courts of our Executive’s administration of our prisons. The ban on prisoner votes is part of the mix of our penal policy. It is the subject of wide consent among the public, and at least of acquiescence by the vast majority of prisoners, as the silence of our postbags makes clear. Our motion is intended as part of a process better to strengthen the hand of the UK Government in arguing in Strasbourg that the majority of members of the Court are seeking a change in UK legislation which, on the face of it, is difficult or impossible to deliver, and in inviting them to find a constructive way forward.

Two objections to our approach have been raised. One is about the example that we may set, and the other is about compensation. On the first, the argument is that if we fail fully to implement the Court’s decision, we will be unable to put pressure on others who also have outstanding Court judgments against them. That argument does not take account of the reality of the situation. There are scores of as yet unenforced judgments against countries such as Russia—but not just Russia—for egregious breaches of human rights, and for presiding over standards so low as to lack any notion of fair trial.

If I thought that our acquiescence in the Court’s decision in Hirst would be the instrument for a change in approach to those recalcitrant countries, I might be persuaded to drop my objections for the greater good. However, there is no evidence of that—indeed, I suggest the reverse. By extending its remit into areas way beyond any original conception of fundamental human rights, the Court in Strasbourg is undermining its own legitimacy and its potential effectiveness in respect of the purposes for which it was established. In other words, the Court and the Council of Europe would have greater success if they reined in their unnecessary excursions into members states’ policy. In that way, we might see some of those judgments better enforced.

This is my last set of points and I shall be brief. On compensation, I simply say this: there are many predictions that the Court in Strasbourg will award compensation against the UK Government, but as yet there is no certainty. In 2005, the Strasbourg Court denied Hirst compensation. Unless the Court now sees the purpose of compensation as some kind of gratuitous fine on the elected British House of Commons, I fail to see by what algebra or alchemy any court could equate the absence of a vote for prisoners, which almost no prisoners of their own volition ever sought, and which still fewer would exercise, with some monetary amount.

I am a strong supporter of the Human Rights Act 1998, the Council of Europe and the text of the convention. I seek no train wreck, but a solution—that is the purpose of our motion. In turn, I hope the Court pulls back from placing the supporters of those instruments in a near-impossible position.