Earlier this year, MPs voted for a motion that sought to keep a ban preventing the majority of prisoners from voting.

The vote was decisive, with only 22 MPs voting to accept the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that a blanket ban was unlawful.
But those who think that the matter has now been settled conclusively should think again. This issue will be raised again before the end of the current Parliament, if only because the government faces being sued if it continues to defy the ECHR.

I was one of the 234 members who supported the motion, not least because I believe that those convicted of a crime serious enough to warrant a term of imprisonment should lose the right to take part in the democratic process during their period of incarceration.

However, I am a pragmatic politician and, as such, have some sympathy for the view that allowing prisoners to vote would help rehabilitate at least some of them. Therefore, there is a strong argument for extending the categories of those prisoners who are allowed currently to vote, which includes those on remand.

For instance, we could allow voting rights for prisoners in open prisons, namely those convicted of relatively minor crimes, and offenders who are transferred from a secure environment.

Because the average stay in an open prison is about six months, in practice few prisoners would actually vote while incarcerated; it must be remembered that as soon as they are released, offenders are immediately entitled to vote.

Of course, the beauty of such a policy is that the government could look the ECHR in the eye and say, honestly, that it had scrapped its blanket ban on prisoners voting, thus avoiding the threat of fines.

Gordon Henderson is the Conservative MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey

Tags: ECHR, Gordon Henderson, Point of order, Prisoners votes