Prisoners serving longer sentences will not get the vote, ministers say Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has said it is “nonsense” to suggest that murderers and rapists are going to be given the right to vote in elections.
He also rejected calls for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights over the issue.
The government has been warned it must allow some prison inmates to vote to comply with a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
MPs will vote on the matter on Thursday with some Tories expected to rebel.
The shadow cabinet will abstain in the vote, while the rest of Labour’s front bench will have a free vote.
Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan said: “It isn’t – nor has it ever been – Labour’s policy to give prisoners the vote.
“It is important that MPs get to debate this issue, but despite numerous requests by me the government has refused to share the legal advice on which their decision to grant certain prisoners the vote is based nor have they answered the other questions I have asked.
“There are therefore questions about whether Thursday’s motion is compliant with our obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights. As a result, it is right that the shadow cabinet abstain on Thursday.”
Backbench MPs of all parties will have a free vote.
Mr Clarke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the government plans to apply the ruling to the minimum number of prisoners possible.
“We are actually grasping the nettle, we have to fulfil our obligations but we’re not going to give the vote to any more prisoners than is necessary to comply with the law,” he said.
“What we can’t do is just defy the law and pretend we’re going to go wandering off.
“Human rights law tends to be applied to rather unattractive and unpleasant people.
“It’s easy to give human rights or freedom of speech to people with big popular support. These issues always come up with people who are not very popular.
“Prisoners are quite rightly being punished and not popular. Some of them are going to get the vote but probably as few as we can give them consistent with our legal obligations.”
Mr Clarke said prisoners serving longer sentences would not be given the vote – but the cut-off point would be decided at a later date.
He said the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, would set out the legal position in the House of Commons on Thursday.
Prime Minister David Cameron said he felt “physically ill” at the thought of granting convicted criminals the right to vote but he had to abide by the European Court’s ruling.
Some Conservative MPs have reacted angrily to the PM’s stance and have called on him to withdraw from the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights over the issue.
Mr Clarke said that was not an option, although the coalition government was setting up a convention to “look again at exactly how the Human Rights Act works”.
“The government does not defy the ruling of courts whose jurisdiction it has always accepted,” he told Today, saying the previous Labour government had “messed about” since the ruling was made five years ago and the coalition was “grasping the nettle”.
At present, in the UK, only prisoners on remand are allowed to vote.
In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that blanket ban unlawful, and in June, the Council of Europe, which enforces the court’s decrees, urged the coalition government to rectify the situation.
The government says it has been advised that unless the law is changed it could face compensation claims from prisoners costing well over £100m.
Thursday’s debate was secured by senior Conservative backbencher David Davis and former Labour cabinet minister Jack Straw who convinced a new Commons committee to allow a vote on the issue.
The voting rights of prisoners is a UK-wide issue and will affect Scotland and Northern Ireland even though the administration of justice is devolved.
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