MPs vote to keep ban on prisoners voting

The vote was a response to a motion, tabled by former Home Secretary Jack Straw and Conservative MP David Davis, which opposed a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that prisoners should be given the right to vote.

Members of the cabinet and shadow cabinet were told to abstain from voting and the motion will not be binding. The motion’s major goal is to halt a removal of the current blanket ban on all prisoners’ rights to vote – which has been in place for 140 years – then to work with the ECHR on a compromise

The Government earlier warned Channel 4 News Political Editor Gary Gibbons that if prisoners are given the vote it could cost £143 million pounds in compensation claims.

FactCheck – Prisoner votes: compensation figures under lock and key

Commons debate

David Davis kicked off the debate by spelling out the two major issues that brought the motion.

“Firstly, is the requirement to give prisoners the vote sensible, just and proper,” he said. “And secondly who should decide on this issue? Should it be the ECHR or should it be the Government of the British people? Prisoners of course have rights, not to be ill treated, the right to be fed, kept warm, given shelter but these rights do not extend to the rights of a British citizen.

“The concept is simple, if you break the law you cannot make the law”.

Jack Straw said that most prisoners accept the loss of the right to vote as part of their punishment: “In 32 years in this House of the hundreds of complaints which I have dealt with, neither I nor my staff can recall one letter from a real prisoner calling for the right to vote from prison, not one.”

But the Commons debate was dominated by the UK versus EU supremacy argument.

Mr Straw highlighted that – unlike other democracies with Supreme Courts, such as Germany or USA, where decisions could be overturned by democratic amendment – the UK’s relationship with the ECHR does not contain such a provision