LONDON: The European Court of Human Rights condemned Britain once again yesterday for banning prisoners from voting, while ruling that 10 inmates who challenged the ban were not entitled to compensation.
The Strasbourg court said that despite moves to change the law, the blanket ban on voting remained and was in breach of the right to free elections enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights.
The judgement is the latest in a number of rulings against Britain on the issue dating back to 2005, each of which has been met with resistance from successive governments in London who insist they must be able to set their own laws.
Lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to preserve the ban in 2011, while Prime Minister David Cameron has said the idea of giving prisoners the vote makes him feel “physically sick”.
The current case was brought by 10 prisoners who were automatically banned from voting in elections to the European Parliament in 2009 because of their incarceration.
In a written ruling, the judges said the claims were identical to previous successful cases and, by five votes to two, said they represented a breach of human rights law.
However, they unanimously rejected an application for compensation, saying their decision in favour of the claimants was “sufficient just satisfaction”.
The European court has previously said that individual countries should be able to decide which inmates should be denied the right to vote, but that a total ban is illegal.
In their latest ruling, the judges recognised the efforts that the British government has made to address its concerns.
A draft bill published in 2012 proposed three options—to give the vote to prisoners serving less than four years, to those serving less than six months, or to keep the ban.
A parliamentary committee examined the bill and made a fourth recommendation, that prisoners serving sentences of 12 months or less should be eligible to vote.
But the ban remains in place, and the judges said that “given that the impugned legislation remains unamended, the court cannot but conclude that... there has been a violation” of human rights law.
A spokesman for Britain’s justice ministry said: “The government has always been clear that it believes prisoner voting is an issue that should ultimately be decided in the UK.”
But he said the government was considering the recommendations from the parliamentary committee.
AFP
