Davis and Straw unite against prisoner voting rights

Victor Southern

I am on the side of both of these politicians despite the fact that I like neither of them. However one is bound to observe that Straw had the opportunity to tackle this when he was Minister of Justice.

Commentator

This is surely a quibble? The key point remains: the ECHR are now basically a bunch of unelected politicians posing as judges and presuming to tell how elected politicians how they should and should not govern. The ECHR has expanded its remit quite deliberately far beyond any defence of basic human rights and ceding to its demands is an affront to democracy.

denis cooper

Yes, but whether it's the EU's Court of Justice in Luxembourg or the Council of Europe's Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the fundamental question is about the enduring sovereignty of the UK Parliament even while the UK is a party to an international treaty.

David Davis should take care, or like the Tory MPs who voted to explicitly reaffirm the sovereignty of Parliament on the face of the European Union Bill he may find himself on the receiving end of four-letter abuse and threats from David Cameron:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1347591/JAMES-FORSYTH-Tory-rebels-compare-David-Cameron-arrogant-bully-Tom-Browns-Schooldays-And-veteran-Bill-Cash-just-latest--Flashmanned.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347579/Tory-rebel-tears-torn-father-David-Cameron-heated-vote.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347821/Ed-Miliband-makes-grab-David-Camerons-Big-Society.html

To quote from Melanie Phillips in the last article:

"The implication by a Conservative Prime Minister that there is no place within the Conservative Party for those Tories who want to protect British sovereignty from being extinguished by the EU really is quite ­extraordinary."

strapworld

denis cooper makes a valid point. But I do believe that the former special forces man would love the opportunity to lay the weak, shallow Cameron out for the count!

The point Mr Blackburn is making is correct yet I am afraid we the great unwashed link the EU's Court of Justice and the Council of Europe's Court of Human Rights as part and parcel of the EU!

There is another major question, Mr Blackburn, as I support what you have written. WHY have our foreign and commonwealth officials not pointed this out to our Foreign Secretary- that man of straw- William Hague!

I have come to the conclusion that Cameron and co are hell bent on ensuring that we are wedded to the european super state before his time in off is over!

This debate will not be supported. Those A listers know they were chosen because they have no moral fibre!

Barry Bilge

"Our unwritten constitution has little to say about prisoner voting. The Court did not deliver an absolute judgement; rather it identified a grey area in ill-defined English law and insisted that the British government clarify the situation. "

We have a written constitution it is just not codified in a single document.

If the ECHR have effectively said that where legislatures have ignored the issue of prisoner voting prisoners should get the vote by default, the key thing is for Parliament to address the issue and do so quickly. It isn't rocket science. It needn't take forever. Parliament can move quickly if it wants but on such easily addressed matters it is bizarrely reluctant. Too many idle MPs are not doing their duty to us. Too busy filling in their expenses claims?

Why should the Government be concerned? Unless they aren't interested in addressing the issue and want to enable prisoner voting rights by default. Get it into parliament and get it sorted.

Is there a corrosive lethargy in the Civil Service and a Euro-paralysis in the Cabinet? They should stop thinking up all kinds of scenarios to scare themselves with about how this could play out if they do one thing or another and just let Parliament do its job.

CS

***There are two main issues here. First is whether or not it is moral or even decent to give the vote to rapists, violent offenders or sex offenders.***

Surely this is misleading. He isn't suggesting that rapists, violent offenders or sex offenders shouldn't have the vote. He isn't even suggesting that convicted rapists, violent offenders or sex offenders shouldn't have the vote. He's merely suggesting that they shouldn't have the vote for the duration of their custodial sentence.

This means that he's happy for them to have the vote once they've been released. Doesn't that imply that the whole question of a moral justification for removing their vote is spurious and that the mention of rapists is for no other reason than to stir up emotional support?

Or is DD saying that his moral objection to rapists expires after they've been released from prison?

Maybe if the man hadn't been so crass as to run a leadership campaign focussed on the size of his supporters' breasts, he might be PM today and he wouldn't have to keep looking for causes to back.

yank

So Dave snuggled up to the Left, and eschewed conservatives, those knuckledragging troglodytes who foolishly believe sovereignty is a critical point to be argued, and now the Left is circling around behind Dave and snuggling up to those conservatives he scorned?

How predictable. And the beauty of it is, it'll work. Those conservatives will go against Dave and the wets.

And please, Mr. Blackburn, repeatedly thumping the drum that the ECHR is not the EU is getting tiresome. Everybody gets that. Really. No kidding. Seriously. It's a known-known. No need to keep repeating this nugget of which the bubble denizens are certain the unenlightened have not the proper understanding. They well have it, and it seems the bubble denizens are the ones ignorant here, I'd say.

In2minds

@Commentator - January 18th, 2011 2:04pm -

"This is surely a quibble"?

Yes it is, much as the EEC began as an economic arrangement then morphed into an all-things-to-all-people nightmare so the -

"ECHR has expanded its remit quite deliberately",

until the Eurosceptics know what they are fighting they don't stand a chance.

oldtimer

Davis and Straw raise a valid point. The sovereignty and power of Parliament is the issue here, not whether it is the EU or the ECHR that is over-ruling it.

Verity

Patrick Mercer for Leader of the Tory Party. We need a fighting man who has commanded in situations where he or his men could die. Not a Bullingdon Boy who's daddy paid off for his hooliganism.

Cameron OUT!

dorothy wilson

"Davis and Straw raise a valid point. The sovereignty and power of Parliament is the issue here, not whether it is the EU or the ECHR that is over-ruling it."

But Straw was a member of the government that gave us the Human Rights Act and which dragooned the Lisbon Treaty through our Parliament. Both of those impinge on our sovereignty.

Like Blunkett, who recently was supporting control orders because the Human Rights Act had deprived us of the power to deport potential terrorists, he is a hypocrite of the first order.

Charles Martel

Mr.Blackburn is being disingenuous again.

"The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was signed in 1950 by member states of the Council of Europe (CoE). The CoE is separate from the EU, although it is a condition of membership of the EU that all member states must also be members of the CoE and ratify the ECHR."

http://www.eucharter.org/home.php?page_id=66

Historically, they are separate, but now (after the Lisbon Treaty) the EU and the ECHR are inter-dependant.

http://www.coe.int/t/dc/files/themes/eu_and_coe/default_EN.asp

C. Snow

So basically you take issue with his use of the word 'the' instead 'a'? It's A European Court. It doesn't matter which one, his point is sound; if our Parliament decides it wishes for no prisoners to have the vote, what right does 'a' European court have to overrule it when our Parliaments cannot bind their successors?

Blofeld's Cat

Verity - I hardly ever agree with anything you post (and I don't agree with this one) but at least they're usually expressed in impeccable English.

who's?

David Blackburn

Charles Martel,

The Fundamental Charter of Human Rights was inaugurated by the Lisbon Treaty – nine years after it was originally drafted and signed. But it only applies to the 27 member states of the European Union, and only in respect of member states implementing EU law or when testing the EU parliament’s legislation in the first place. http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/documents/downloads/guide_to_treaty_of_lisbon.pdf

A needless instrument, I grant you, and a pernicious one in the manner of its promotion of the EU Parliament and the EU Commission above sovereign states. But one that is totally irrelevant to a judgement made by the ECHR, arrived at by an interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which has the 47 signatories comprising the Council of Europe. The ECHR and the EU were separate institutions and remain so, and prisoners' voting rights is not a question of EU competence. Sorry to bang on about this, but it’s vital that the Eurosceptic cause acknowledges this and defines the terms of its opposition; otherwise it will remain as fractured as it is now.

yank

The terms of its opposition are opposing those who are undermining sovereignty, and what those in the bubble consider "vital" matters little.

You'd have to be capable of viewing this from a conservative perspective, which you may find difficult. That means first principles are considered first.

It's the sovereignty... as is obvious even from across thousands of miles of open ocean. Why is it that only the bubble denizens fail to see this?

HJ

David Davis: "First is whether or not it is moral or even decent to give the vote to rapists, violent offenders or sex offenders."

But that's not the issue. It's about whether anyone has the right to take it away. The vote is not in someone's gift to be given in the first place - it is a right.

I'm also somewhat uneasy about the idea that parliament should decide who is allowed to vote for it.

Having said that, I can see a strong argument against murderers having the right to vote. They have deprived someone else of this right (amongst other things), so should forfeit their own right to vote.

Vulture

Straw is a snake and Davis a dunderhead but on this issue they are right.

Rue de la Loi

David Blackburn is wrong and Charles Martel is essentially right. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is an almost word for word copy of the ECHR and expressly provides that it is to be construed in accordance with ECHR case law.

In stating that "indeed, the [ECHR]Court frequently finds against the EU" David Blackburn disqualifies himself from all comment on this, and certaintly from leaping to the (probably mistaken) conclusion that when David Davis referred to the "European Court" he referred to the ECJ. Any informed commentator on this matter would know that, in the appropriate context, "European Court" is perfectly acceptable as a reference to Strasbourg rather than Luxembourg, and would certainly know that the ECHR has never "found against" the EU, for the simple reason that the EU is not a member of the Council of Europe (although that is due to change under the Lisbon Treaty). The ECHR can only rule against members of the Council of Europe and can only rule on cases brought before it. The fact that it has not ruled on prisoners' voting rights in other countries merely reflects the fact that other Council of Europe members do not share Britain's generosity in providing Legal Aid for those wishing to attack its laws and institutions in international tribunals.

Verity

Blofeld's Cat - I agree with you. I zapped this off without a reread because someone was at the door and I hit Send without a reread.

Very poor show.

David Blackburn

Rue de la Loi,

As to your last point, no it doesn't. It merely reflects the fact that those legal codes have clearly defined the rights of prisoners. We haven't.

As to EU law before the ECHR, you are right - but only post-Lisbon. I've clarified the original draft to account for that. Apologies for my own loose phrasing!

Lastly, the Fundamental Charter only applies to the implementation of EU law in a member state. Prisoners' voting rights under sovereign penal systems have nothing to do with EU law or its implementation.

As I say throughout, the ECHR is a shambles and must be reformed. But it's important to reform it for the right reasons.

Charles Martel

The ECHR and EU are separate institutions, but from my understanding, to be a member of the EU we have accept the supremacy of the ECHR. The EU is now inter-dependant with the ECHR.

We can be out of the EU and within the ECHR.
We cannot be in the EU without the ECHR.

Maybe 0.1% of the population (judges and lawyers) understand the full legal positions of the various institutions.
But 100% of people understand the effects - Foreign courts interfering in domestic issues.

The ECHR is really a useful proxy for the Eurosceptics, it displays the effects of supra-national institutions in an emotive way that the curvature of Bananas does not.

You can hardly blame Eurosceptics for not drawing the distinction between the two (well three, if you include the Council of Europe).

It may force you to bang on about it Mr.Blackburn, but the simple fact remains, if we want to leave the jurisdiction of the ECHR, we must also leave the EU.

Andy Leeds

Sick of the ECHR and the EU sticking their noses into matters that do not concern them. When the ECHR was signed in the 1950s not only was murder a Capital offence, but under the Forfeiture Act of 1870 they and all over prisoners had no right to vote. That was the case when the convention was signed, at which point it was entirely inline with the convention, as it remains. It is the judges who have interpreted the convention incorrectly.

Cynic

If Ireland can retain a blanket ban, why can't we? Nothing to do with Wavy Davy being a EUrophile, is it?

Verity

Cynic - Wavy Davy is not so much a europhile as a Davyphile who sees his future at the top table in Brussels. Everything must be sacrificed in the service of Wavy Davy's monstrous ego.

Who else but an enormous egoist would think that the British public would be interested in watching him and his family having breakfast? Didn't that strike anyone else as too bizarre for words?

It's all about Dave. The photos in the Garden of Remembrance were all about DAVE, not the fallen.

He has got to be the creepiest PM Britain has ever had ... and that is against the awesome competition of Edward Heath and Tony Blair.

Scary Biscuits

David Blackburn splitting hairs: the European Court is not the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) but the European Court of Justice (ECJ). I'm not even sure he's correct but who cares? The point is we never agreed to be ruled by either.

The Anglo-Saxon, Magna Carta idea of authority lent from the people to the prince and his courts (rather than the other way around) is both superior in theory and, based on comparing the last 800 years of English History with the European experience, better in practice too.

Rue de la Loi

The alteration of the post to "indeed, the Court has frequently found against EU law when implemented by member states" only muddies the waters and I note no examples are given. Although there have been a few instances where EU Member States have been found to infringe the ECHR in (wrongly) exercising discretion in implementing EU law, correct compliance with a clear EU obligation will take an EU Member State a long way in Strasbourg in fending off a challenge; as the ECHR said in Bosphorus v Ireland, "the Court finds that the protection of fundamental rights by Community law can be considered to be, and to have been at the relevant time, “equivalent”... to that of the Convention system. Consequently, the presumption arises that Ireland did not depart from the requirements of the Convention when it implemented legal obligations flowing from its membership of the European Community". Thus even pre-Lisbon, the two systems were inextricably linked and acting pursuant to an EU obligation provides a Member State with a presumptively sound defence in Strasbourg.

As to claiming that other ECHR adherents' "legal codes have clearly defined the rights of prisoners. We haven't", you state that Ireland has a "blanket ban" which sounds a pretty clear definition to me and also a fair description of existing UK law, the simplicity of which requires no "codification".

If an Irish prisoner could manage to get a case all the way to the ECHR, the result looks a foregone conclusion in the light of the case against the UK. It is not for the Court to "challenge" other countries' laws, it is for aggrieved persons in other countries to use the legal system available to them to bring a matter to the ECHR. As, for example, the history of sex discrimination cases in the ECJ shows, countries with lobby groups agitating for "rights" will throw up more cases pushing the boundaries of the law than those without.

David Bouvier

David - given that the main snide thrust of your article seems to be to accuse David Davis of devaluing his cause through "loose talk or transparent disengenuousness" it places a great burdon on you to be correct.

In my limited understanding is that you are dealing with:

(a) The European Court of Justice, a sub-court of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and

(b) The European Court of Human Rights established under the convention.

It is not all obvious why the phrase "the European Court" cannot refer equally to either, just as many short phrases are unclear without context.

You could pedantically express concern about the risk of confusion but to accuse him of bad faith with no clear reason is unfair and reflects badly on you, not him.

Why the beef with David Davis?

Perhaps your editor will insist from now on that you always refer to him as "The incumbent Editor of The Spectator magazine of London". Perhaps he does already. Who knew?

Tiberius

Verity: when you opened the door, what did Mr Cameron say to you?

Verity

Tiberius - Wha'? Don't get it.

But if Cameron had been on my doorstep, he wouldn't have got a chance to draw a breath when I opened the door.

mark francis

In the next election the Isle of Wight, currently the largest constituency, will be split into two being the smallest. Parkhurst, Albany and Camp Hill Prisons will fall into IOW North and the new electorate could swing the seat.

I suspect most criminals would vote Tory.