Voting by Prisoners

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Everybody will be well aware that there is a five-minute limit. We have 39 speakers to get through, and my intention is to get everybody in. If we have fewer interventions and shorter speeches, we will enable that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I have to rule. Please, take your seat.

Sir Peter Bottomley has made a point of order and is absolutely correct. We should not mention another person in another place in that way, so I am sure that the hon. Lady does not need to continue down that line.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

If I may just finish, I should say that nobody now would think that suing a local authority or a public body over the negligence of their actions was wrong. So, using one person to criticise and castigate the whole European convention is plainly not right.

On prisoners’ right to vote, I know that some people say that, because the prisoner has committed the offence, all their rights should be taken away, but does that mean that we should go back 100 or 200 years when hard labour was considered to be the right punishment? I am sure that, in those days, when people said that our penal policies should be much more humane and liberal, just as many people said, “Oh no, these people have committed crimes and therefore should be punished to the hilt.” As we did not adhere to those policies then, why are we reacting so strongly to this issue now?

I agree with several Members who have said that, in reality, the number of prisoners who exercise the right will probably be quite small. In my years before becoming a Member, I represented and prosecuted many defendants, and I met many people who became prisoners, so I can say, anecdotally, that most of them are unlikely to vote, but the question is one of principle: what do we as a society and as a nation stand for?

Many years ago, we abolished the death penalty, bar for two offences: high treason and burning Her Majesty’s shipyard. A few years ago, a Labour Government abolished the death penalty even for those offences. Why did they do that? We had not issued the death penalty to anyone since the ’60s, but we abolished it for those two offences because we felt that as a society in the 21st century that was the right thing to do. A point of principle was involved, and for me the issue of prisoners’ rights is a point of principle, too.

The disfranchisement of sentenced prisoners dates back to the Forfeiture Act 1870, and the origins of the ban are rooted in the notion of civic death: a punishment entailing the withdrawal of citizenship rights. But Dr Selby, the former bishop of Her Majesty’s prisons, and now the president of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards, states:

“Denying convicted prisoners the right to vote serves no purpose”—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Time is up.