The parliament’s influential Joint Committee on Human Rights has warned ministers that unless the UK government gives prisoners the right to vote in the next election, it will be illegal under European law. This comes after a European Court of Human Rights Ruling in 2005 that prison inmates should be granted the right to vote.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is comprised of six MPs and six peers, has written to Jack Straw’s ministry of Justice making it clear that the government must urgently change the law so that the majority of Britain’s 84,000 prisoners are given the right to vote before the next general elections. Advice given by the Committee includes ‘a legislative solution can and should be introduced during the next parliamentary session’ to avoid a general election which ‘fails to comply with the convention’ by continuing to have the prison population ‘unlawfully disenfranchised’.

Presently those not permitted to vote in the UK include members of the Lords, those found guilty of election corruption within the last five years, and people with learning disabilities or a mental illness who are deemed incapable of making reasonable judgment.

The European ruling of 2005 states only that a ‘blanket ban’ on prisoner voting is unlawful. Therefore certain sectors of the prison population (including murderers such as Ian Huntley and Rosemary West) would remain disenfranchised. This gives government the option to award the vote to prisoners who have been rehabilitated and are considered ‘good citizens’. This recognition could further help rehabilitate and re-integrate prisoners into normal society. 

The committee’s conclusions threaten a constitutional crisis for the Labour party, who have been trying to bury the issue since the European ruling in 2005. They anticipate a difficult balancing act between complying with the Convention and down-playing an issue which their political opponents can easily exploit to their advantage. The conservative party’s opinion was made clear by shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert, who sees ‘sweeping new entitlements for prisoners’ as a ‘classic example of over-reaching human rights laws which have lost sight of the importance of balancing responsibilities’.

January 2008 was the deadline for a two-stage consultation on the issue of voting rights for prisoners, after the government originally agreed to consider the issue. A new law was promised to follow in May 2008, but so far no concrete results have been achieved. Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris attacked the Ministry of Justice for failing to reach any conclusions, stating that, “the government cannot pick and choose which human rights treaty obligations it fulfils for party political reasons or just because it feels an issue is not populist enough” adding that unless reform to prisoners’ voting rights is carried out before the next elections, then “[the UK] may be in breach of international law.”

The Prison Reform Trust has also written to the Justice Secretary to ask why the government was delaying the legislation.  Other countries have already passed legislation reforming prisoners’ voting rights in order to achieve compatibility with European law. In 2006 Ireland allowed all prisoners to vote by post in the constituency where they would be living were they not imprisoned.