Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Stephen Williams and Bob Blackman

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

We have had an excellent debate. Indeed, it has shown the House at its best: the opportunity to debate the issues of the day, without being whipped on how we vote at the end.

I come to the debate not as a lawyer but with a background in science and mathematics, and as such I treat these issues with logic. My starting point is that Parliament sets the rules—it sets the laws. It decides what is a criminal offence and what is not, and what the range of a sentence should be when someone has broken the law and is guilty of such a criminal offence. It is then for the judges to determine, after someone has been found guilty, what sentence they serve, and the current position is clear: if they are imprisoned, they lose their right to vote.

There is a grave danger, however, in our saying to the judges, “You can decide whether someone should be sent to prison, how long they should lose the vote for, and whether it should be three months, six months or whatever.” Equally, there is an inherent danger, because judges might have in the back of their minds the fact that, if they sentence someone to two years’ imprisonment, that person will lose their vote, but if they imprison them for only one year, that person will keep it. That would leave the judges to make the judgment. That is fundamentally wrong in society, and we should shy away from it.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

Is not the solution that judges should have discretion over whether to withhold the right to vote rather than its being part of a sentence?

[Bob Blackman]

The logic that flows from that is that when judges decide that someone goes to prison, that person should lose their right to vote, full stop, without any slippery slope in the other direction.