Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Jack Straw and Peter Bottomley

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

When someone is convicted of an offence, a number of elements are available to the court in disposing of the sentence. I cannot think of a single objective that is met by withdrawing the right to be registered to vote and to vote. It is clearly not a deterrent; I do not see that it is a punishment; I do not see that it helps rehabilitation; and I do not think that it is much of a penance either. The question is, therefore, why do we do it?

I think that Parliament should decide these issues. It should not be for the Supreme Court across the square or the European Court. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for securing a debate in Westminster Hall on 11 January on this matter, and I am glad that we are having this debate now. The motion is defective in terms of setting policy, although it is very good for expressing opinion. I can agree with its first elements, but as my amendment—it would replace the last clause from the last semicolon in the motion—states, it would be a good idea to note that nearly

“a third of men have by the age of 30 been convicted of a serious criminal offence for which they could”

be sent to jail for six months or more. Hon. Members who have spoken about the problem of people breaking the law were right to phrase it that way. The question of whether someone is sent to jail as well is an extra issue. If we are going to say that breaking the law means that the right to vote should go, a third of us here would have lost the right to vote at some stage in our lives. Fortunately, however, most courts do not use a sentence of six months or more for offences for which one could be used.

We could split the motion—we might have to return to this point—between its European side, with which I mostly agree, and the question of whether we should maintain the blanket ban, or whether we should either say, as the Government suggest we might, a certain number of years, or, as others have said, a certain period before release. We can debate those issues without trying to put the two together. Although the debate has been interesting—having listened to it for four hours, I have probably gained as much as many who have been here the whole time—I believe that we ought to consider the issues separately. By all means, we can talk to the public and the newspapers, and look at the good cartoons in the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, most of which could form the basis of a good speech. However, we ought to return to the question: what is the objective of sentencing policy that makes the withdrawal of the right to vote so important?

I leave the House a question: who has the responsibility to register those who are convicted and sent to jail? If I am already on the electoral register, is there a system for the courts to tell my returning officer to take me off it, or am I just left on? If I have set up a proxy beforehand, would that still work? Those are matters of detail, which are not important today. The important question today is: do we, as the motion says we should, acknowledge

“the treaty obligations of the UK”?

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on that. As for the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), whom I knew before he became middle-aged, he said that it was not the right time to bring the issue up, when the period that was “not the right time” allowed for more than five years of procrastination, with one election followed by another within five years. That was not the strongest argument that he brought forward this afternoon.

[Mr Straw]

It may not have been strong, but it was true.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

In the debate in Westminster Hall on 11 January, I quoted Justice Dennis Challeen. He said—I will précis it—that we want people to be responsible, but we deny them more responsibility; that we want them to think of others, but we put them in situations where they do not. As for using the vote, if people could start saying what kind of society they want to be part of, and if they want to be law-abiding subjects and useful citizens on release, as many do, then it could be part rehabilitation. However, I do not believe that by giving the vote we will suddenly find the reconviction rate dropping by 20 points. That would be ambitious. Those are ambitions that we ought to have—I am glad that tribute has been paid to what the Lord Chancellor is proposing to do to change our penal system to make it work better—but would it not be even better if many fewer people were committing criminal offences for the first time, and if the period in which they did were reduced even faster?

Winston Churchill’s speech as Home Secretary from 1910 can be quoted, but that point is on the record, so I will not go into that. What I would say, to those who want to start condemning the Prison Reform Trust or the Howard League, or those such as myself—I have served on the council of both Nacro and Mind, the National Association for Mental Health, and I was chairman of the Children’s Society, trying to deal with those at risk of becoming serious and serial criminals—is that we have to recognise that most of the people whom we are talking about are bad, mad or sad, or a combination. However, they are not always that all the time, so the sooner we start learning how to get deterrents, prevention and rehabilitation and can convert them to law-abiding citizens, the better.

I hope that we shall have this debate again, but after splitting the issues, so that we can make progress on both.