LONDON: Britain is considering ending a 140-year-old ban on prisoners voting, to comply with European law, a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday.
Britain has been forced to look at ways to give about 70,000 prisoners voting rights since the ban was declared unlawful in 2004 by the European Court of Human Rights, but the process stalled at the general election in May this year.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which came to power after the election, will update the rest of Europe before the end of the month, Cameron’s spokesman said.
“It’s an unfortunate position, it is far from ideal,” he told reporters. “I am sure people will find this difficult to understand but we do have to take account of these court cases … It is not the approach of the British government to break the law.”
The government, which has come under fire from some Conservative members of the coalition over the move, could restrict voting rights depending on offences or sentence-length, options looked into by the previous Labour government. Other European countries such as Spain and Sweden do not have a ban at all while others including Germany and France ban certain types of offenders from voting.
“This issue is something we have been considering for some time,” the spokesman said. John Hirst, incarcerated for manslaughter, took a case to the European Court of Human Rights in 2004 to argue for the right to vote. The court found in his favour and also knocked down a government appeal in 2005.
“In this system where you’ve got a democracy, people can put pressure and lobby in parliament for changes in the law and improved conditions, but you can’t do that if you haven’t got the vote,” Hirst told BBC radio.
