Prisoners’ Votes: Britain’s Long Refusal

On 6 October 2005, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in Hirst v United Kingdom (No. 2) that the UK’s blanket ban on convicted prisoners voting breached the right to free elections. The Court did not say “every prisoner must vote.” It said an automatic, one-size-fits-all ban is unlawful because it is indiscriminate and disproportionate.

The UK’s law was (and largely remains) blunt: section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 bars convicted prisoners from voting while detained. The politics in Westminster was blunt too: losing the vote is treated as part of punishment — “you broke the rules, you lose your say.” The constitutional cover story was Parliamentary sovereignty: Strasbourg can criticise, but Parliament decides.

In November 2010, the ECtHR returned with sharper pressure in Greens and M.T. v United Kingdom, setting a timetable for the UK to bring forward proposals. That ruling became final on 11 April 2011. The Court was effectively saying: we waited five years after Hirst; you are still pretending the judgment is optional.

Westminster’s response was a sovereignty tantrum dressed as principle. On 10 February 2011 MPs backed a motion (234–22) insisting that Parliament should decide whether prisoners get the vote. Around the same time, David Cameron captured the mood when he said it made him “physically ill” to contemplate giving the vote to anyone who is in prison, arguing that people who go to prison should lose rights including the right to vote.

Notable voices condemned the refusal because it made the UK look like a country that demands rule-following from everyone else but treats it as negotiable for itself. On 31 March 2011, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, said there should be no blanket ban and criticised senior UK politicians for acting “appalled” by the idea. Thorbjørn Jagland, the Council of Europe’s Secretary General, later warned UK parliamentarians that compliance with ECtHR judgments is a fundamental obligation of membership. In the UK debate, Prison Reform Trust chief executive Juliet Lyon CBE described the ban as a “19th century punishment of civic death” and argued that modern prisons should focus on rehabilitation and respect for the rule of law.

When the Government finally moved, it moved sideways. In 2012 it published a draft bill with options — including one that simply re-stated the total ban. Eventually, in 2017 the UK offered “administrative” changes: prisoners released on temporary licence could vote while outside prison (with people on remand already eligible). The core rule — no vote for convicted prisoners in a cell on polling day — stayed in place.

On 6 December 2018, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers adopted a final resolution closing supervision of the UK’s compliance. In plain English: after thirteen years of political resistance, Strasbourg accepted a minimalist workaround and filed the case away.

That ending is the sting. Britain didn’t embrace the principle that rights apply even to the unpopular; it searched for a narrow loophole that avoided rewriting the central ban. So when politicians talk about Britain’s “proud tradition” of rights, remember this episode: delay, defiance, and a grudging, technical “compliance” designed to stop the argument — not to honour the rule of law.