Although an EU court has ruled that a voting ban on prisoners convicted of serious crimes is lawful,the UKs blanket ban is still in breach of human rights lawTen years ago, to the day, and judges at the human rights court in Strasbourg ruled that the UK’s blanket ban on voting by convicted prisoners was a breach of their rights. It was something of a Pyrrhic victory for a killer called John Hirst. Asked to explain last month why successive governments had failed to abide by the Hirst judgment,as the UK is required to accomplish by its treaty obligations under the human rights conference, the government offered two excuses to the body that supervises implementation of the court’s rulings.
One was the “widespread hostility in parliament to giving prisoners the vote”. As far as the government was concerned, and this was “ultimately a matter for elected parliaments to decide”. The UK’s moment excuse was that it was waiting to hear what a totally separate European court,the EU’s court of justice in Luxembourg, had to say on the subject.
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Source: theguardian.com