Voting by Prisoners

Michael McCann Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

I support the motion, particularly the part noting that this House should be the place where legislative decisions of this nature are made. There have been a number of contributions from learned Members, but I should like to take the debate in a different direction. I read with interest the report, “Voting by convicted prisoners: summary of evidence”, of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which states at paragraph 4:

“We took the evidence summarised in this Report with a view to exploring the current legal position, not with a view to questioning whether extending the right to vote to convicted prisoners in certain circumstances would be philosophically, morally or politically justifiable.”

Those words are important because those are exactly the kind of judgments that our constituents expect us to make and to use in the Chamber. However sophisticated or complicated the arguments get, this is about a basic belief system and whether giving prisoners the right to vote is right or wrong. I take the view that someone who has committed a serious crime or series of crimes and who has been incarcerated, apart from the exclusions that have been mentioned already, should lose that right.

I am not prepared to flinch from that position and I shall tell hon. Members why. The general public might not wish to discuss the details of the principle of proportionality put forward by Aidan O’Neill and they might not be too concerned about Lord Mackay’s conclusion that the right to vote is not an absolute right, but they know instinctively when something is right or wrong. I believe that the public think it is wrong to give prisoners the vote.

[Tom Brake]

Have you asked them?

[Mr McCann]

I am just about to go into that. I have asked them, because I wanted to test my beliefs and whether my view that it would be wrong to give prisoners the vote would be taken on board by the public who elected me. The reaction I got from people was very similar. After I explained the issue, there was a pregnant pause because people thought that I was about to give them the punch line to a joke, rather than tell them about an issue that we were going to debate in Parliament. Then a look of disbelief came across their face at the very thought of giving criminals the right to vote.

I was lucky enough to visit Sandhurst earlier this week along with other hon. Members as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme. We saw young men and women being prepared to be the officers of the future. In about six months’ time they will be serving in Afghanistan. I took that opportunity to ask those fine young men and women, as a litmus test, whether they believed it was right to give prisoners the vote. To an individual, they said no; it is very important to listen to them as well.

It is interesting to listen to the people who come to the debate from the other side. Liberty argues that denying prisoners the vote undermines the Human Rights Act, but I believe the reverse is true. The Howard League for Penal Reform suggests—ludicrously, in my opinion—that extending the right to vote to prisoners would be a natural progression of the ECHR. I disagree with that completely: it is an example of how risible an argument can become when it is over-egged.

What should we say to people who think we are over-hyping this issue when we say that rapists, paedophiles and murderers will get the vote? I looked up three examples of people who have been imprisoned for less than four years. Are we going to give the vote to Corey Smith, aged 19? He was sentenced to just under four years for threatening to stab commuters on the Central line in a three-week crime wave in December. Should we give the vote to the Mazambi family, three of whom were convicted for less than four years for stealing £500,000 from Comic Relief? That money should have gone to good causes. What about the motoring case of Jonathan Francis McGonagle, aged 23? He was sentenced to less than four years for killing a 25-year-old pedestrian while being drunk in charge of a car. Are they the type of people who should be given the vote?

[Simon Hughes]

If I make a speech today, I am not going to argue for a blanket right to vote for prisoners, but what does the hon. Gentleman say about the fact that in most other countries that subscribe to the Council of Europe the same view is not taken and the right to vote is given to some prisoners? What is the difference between the British culture and the rest of Europe that means that people just a few miles away have such very different views?

[Mr McCann]

Because we are different. Northern Europeans’ view of life can be somewhat different to that of southern Europeans. They are entitled to their point of view, as are we; as Members of this House, we are entitled to take decisions on these matters. I dismiss the right hon. Gentleman’s point because this is about interpreting the European convention on human rights and how it is incorporated into UK law.

I was mindful of the words of Louis D. Brandeis, who was an associate justice of the Supreme Court in the United States of America. That gentleman said:

“If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.”

That is an important point, which we should remember.

In my opinion, laws that command the support of Members of the House are being manipulated in unacceptable ways. It is perverse to argue that those who break our laws, and who have been incarcerated for doing so, should be given the right to vote, and there is a burden of responsibility for Members in this House to speak out. I have done so today and I will be backing the motion.