European Convention on Human Rights

Lord Goodhart Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, has introduced the debate on this very important subject. I am delighted for two reasons: first, we have heard far too few speeches from the noble and learned Lord since the day in June 2003 when he was suddenly expelled from his office as Lord Chancellor; secondly, it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, who, in the early days of the Blair Government, secured the enactment of the Human Rights Act. Without him it is doubtful that we would have had anything like as good an Act as we now have.

The purpose of the debate is to draw attention to the European Convention on Human Rights. The element of that convention and of the Human Rights Act on which I wish to concentrate—along with the noble and learned Lord and several other speakers in the debate—is the endless delay of British Governments to alter the law to allow some prisoners to vote in elections. This has been held by the European Court of Human Rights to be a breach of the prisoners’ rights. This has aroused aggressive responses from much of the media and many citizens, not least the Prime Minister.

However, if we think a little more about the situation, we may decide that this is a strong conclusion at which to arrive. There will be no particular pleasure for prisoners in casting their vote. In the open world, casting votes is a right, but it is also regarded by many as a duty—not a legally binding duty, of course, but a civil obligation. Many prisoners have never voted—sometimes because they have failed to register, sometimes because they have never bothered to go to the polling station. Prisoners getting towards the end of their sentences should be encouraged to take an interest in public life and what is going on outside the prison—that includes voting.

Providing opportunities to vote should be regarded not as some sort of gift or present to the prisoners but as part of the rehabilitation process. I do not believe that prisoners serving a life sentence or with many years to go before release should have a vote nor that the European Court of Human Rights would require them to but prisoners with, let us say, less than four years of imprisonment remaining should have the right to vote. Given that most forms of election in the United Kingdom run in a four-year cycle, this means that prisoners would be released while the winners of the elections in which they voted were still in office.

The issues involved in voting by prisoners reminds me of the great penal reformer from the 1920s to the 1940s, Sir Alex Paterson, and his dictum that,

“men come to prison as a punishment, not for punishment”.

The loss of liberty is the punishment, not harsh treatment in prison. The issue of prisoners voting is an interesting and unusual example of human rights. Voting, as I have said, is a mixture of right and of obligation. I do not think that it is an absolute right which can be exercised by everybody in prison but the duty element of voting needs to be kept in mind, as must the quotation from Alex Paterson. There is no reason why, for prisoners approaching release, deprival of voting should be regarded as a justifiable punishment. Instead, voting should be regarded as training for release. This is how the Government should handle it.