Voting by Prisoners

Part of Backbench Business — [20th Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 4:00 pm on 10 February 2011.

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Photo of Ben Gummer Ben Gummer Conservative, Ipswich 4:00, 10 February 2011

My right hon. Friend Mr Lilley got to the heart of the matter when he said that two things were at stake, one of principle and one of politics. I will deal first with two matters of principle on which I do not think the House has yet touched. The first has vexed moral and political philosophers for centuries: the difference, and combat, between freedoms and rights.

Many Members have rightly called the House's attention to the thought of rapists and murderers being given the vote and what that would be like for our constituents. I wonder whether I can place a more positive image of voting in the minds of Members: that of the long queues that formed in the first democratic elections in South Africa, or in the elections that followed the fall of socialist regimes in the eastern bloc, and in those only a few weeks ago in southern Sudan when the people there found their independence. Those people were expressing a freedom; for the first time they were expressing their freedom from tyranny.

Voting is an expression of freedom, but it is more than that: it is the constructive act that makes freedom possible. Those who commit crimes deny freedom to others, either by the force of violence or by inhibiting the actions of people and communities through fear. It is a right and proper mode of retribution for a community to deprive such an individual of their freedom, because that is what he or she has done to others. Surely, therefore, it goes against the essence of the retributive punishment being meted out by the state on behalf of the community if the individual is able to participate in that community while in prison. On that simple issue of principle, I cannot understand, despite all the elegant arguments put forward, why prisoners should be granted that most special and precious freedom, which is an expression of the freedom of those in the community.