Prisoners to get vote in time for next General Election

Prisoners to get vote in time for next General Election



The government's best laid plan to delay legislating to give all convicted prisoners the vote until after the next General Election, has today been scuppered by the Committee of Ministers in the European Parliament. The Labour government has been found guilty of unacceptable delays since the judgment of Hirst v UK(No2) was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights 5 years ago. The Committee of Ministers was asked by myself, and solicitor Elkan Abrahamson of AS Law (Liverpool) and barrister Flo Krause of Meritz Chambers, and organisations such as Liberty, Prison Reform Trust, Unlock, and the AIRE Centre, for an interim resolution. What this means is that the government must resolve the issue by December, to the satifaction of the Committee of Ministers, or the case will be sent back to the ECtHR for a final resolution. What this means is that the ECtHR will expel the UK as a Member State of the European Union. All Member States have to agree to abide by the European Convention and the decisions of the ECtHR to become a Member State of the European Union.

On 5 June 2009, the Committee of Ministers was presented with evidence from those in support of the Prisoners Votes Case, and submissions were also made on behalf of the government. The Committee of Ministers rejected the government's submissions and instead accepted the evidence submitted by those in support of the Prisoners Votes Case. In other words, the government has been caugt out lying and employing delaying tactics in an attempt to ignore the ECtHR ruling.

The government has been put in check.

The next move is check mate!

The only question Gordon Brown and Jack Straw have to answer is, is it worth being expelled from the EU on this issue? The Eurosceptics, UKIP and the BNP and Dan Hannan, would all say "Yes". However, it has to be said that the vast majority would prefer being in the EU to being kicked out of it and therefore their answer is "No".

1059th DH meeting – 5 June 2009
Section 4.2

- 1 case against United Kingdom
74025/01 Hirst No. 2, judgment of 06/10/2005 - Grand Chamber

Decisions

The Deputies,

1. noted the action plan of the United Kingdom authorities and the recently published second-stage public consultation which will be followed by draft legislation;

2. expressed concern about the significant delay in implementing the action plan and recognised the pressing need to take concrete steps to implement the judgment particularly in light of upcoming United Kingdom elections which must take place by June 2010 at the latest;

3. noted that the second stage of the consultation will close in September 2009 and stressed the need to take the procedural steps following the consultation without delay in order to adopt the measures necessary to implement the judgment;

4. decided to resume consideration of this case at the latest at their 1072nd meeting (December 2009) (DH) in light of an interim resolution to be prepared by the Secretariat, if necessary.