Hackney MPs miss vote on prisoner voting

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Both Hackney MPs missed this month’s House of Commons vote on giving prisoners the right to vote.

Neither Diane Abbott (MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington) nor Meg Hillier (MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch) voted on the cross-party motion. Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn and six other Labour MPs voted against it.

Meg Hillier, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch

The motion on prisoner voting itself called for keeping the status quo whereby all prisoners, except those on remand or imprisoned for contempt or default, are barred from voting: other prisoners do not have this democratic right.

It was proposed to the House of Commons by Jack Straw MP (Labour) and David Davis MP (Conservative) and was passed with an overwhelming majority, with of 234 MPs in favour and 22 against.

The Citizen asked the Hackney MPs why they had not attended the vote on 10 February, how they would have voted had they been there, and for a comment on the issue of prisoner voting itself. A spokesperson for Diane Abbott said she would not be commenting on the matter, whilst Meg Hillier’s office has yet to respond.

According to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the government is in breach of international law, in that the UK’s restrictive rules fall short of international standards for free and fair elections.

The non-binding vote does not have a direct influence on UK law, but it indicates to the government  the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that change is not imminent. The government has till August 2011 to implement the ECHR ruling.

A total of 62 Labour MPs were in favour of the current legal provisions.

Critics of the motion argue that whilst the UK is active in promoting free and fair elections around the world and encouraging other countries to uphold international standards, it is failing to uphold those very same standards at home.

Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust, told the Guardian newspaper that she believes the vote is not a fair representation of MPs’ opinion since two-thirds of them abstained.

She said, “Twenty two MPs voted against the motion. This means just over one third of the total number of MPs in the House of Commons voted to retain the ban.

“Although the vote is not legally binding on the government, the message it sends to prisoners and people working in the prison service is a poor one. The outdated ban on prisoners voting has no place in a modern prison system, which is about rehabilitation and respect for the rule of law.”

Up to 2,500 prisoners could be awarded damages from Strasbourg if a new bill is not implemented in time.

The ministers and shadow cabinet were asked to abstain by Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband respectively. The latter did not give voting instructions to backbench Labour MPs.

The issue arose after a British prisoner, John Hirst, won a case in the European Court of Human Rights in 2005, arguing that the UK’s blanket ban was illegal. Since that time, the government has been under pressure to amend the law.