Voting by Prisoners

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Davis]

If colleagues will forgive me, I am almost out of time.

So where do we go from here? If Parliament decides by a strong majority today, the Government will have to go back to the Court and tell it to think again, because it cannot deliver a third of its rulings. If this House will not provide a change in the law, it cannot deliver a change in the law. That will lead the Court to have to decide how it deals with this sort of crisis in future. Lord Justice Judge and Lady Justice Arden, and others, have predicted this crisis and pointed out that we need to have the right of recall, the right of review and the right of challenge. That is what should come out of this motion.

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General was kind enough to intervene on me, I thought I would remind him that today is almost the anniversary of the day when he said the following words:

“The Government must allow a parliamentary debate which gives MPs the opportunity to insist on retaining our existing practice that convicted prisoners can't vote.”

I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now. The House should insist that this is our decision, and from this place we will not move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Alan Beith]

rose—

[Mr Straw]

I need to make progress, but I will give way to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) a bit later.

Rather, the problem has arisen because of the judicial activism of the Court in Strasbourg, which is widening its role not only beyond anything anticipated in the founding treaties but beyond anything anticipated by the subsequent active consent of all the state parties, including the UK.

In his major lecture two years ago, to which reference has already been made, Lord Hoffmann spelled out in eloquent detail the difficulties that the situation was causing, including for the UK judiciary. He said that the Strasbourg Court

“lacked constitutional legitimacy”

in intervening in matters

“on which Member States…have not surrendered their sovereign powers”.

He added well-founded criticism of the highly variable quality of its judges and administration.

Where the Court has given judgment against the UK in respect of fundamental human rights, successive Home Secretaries and UK Governments have readily complied, whether on specific cases, such as terrorist deportations, or on matters such as the need for proper regulation of phone-tapping and the intelligence agencies—and so has this House, whether or not it agreed with what the Court was saying, because we have voluntarily and readily accepted its jurisdiction.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Various states will from time to time think that the Court has overstepped its limits and taken too broad a view of its powers. Are they all entitled at any stage to disregard its judgments, and what does that mean for the convention?

[Mr Straw]

No, they are not, and I will come on to that. The fundamental distinction to be drawn is this: all of us, as I have just spelled out, are required to respect and observe decisions of the Court on fundamental human rights, because it was in respect of those that we and other countries signed up.