David Cameron was on Tuesday night under pressure to stand up to the European Court of Human Rights after it ordered Britain to give prisoners the vote within six months.Read the rest here.
European judges on Tuesday upheld a ruling that a blanket ban on allowing inmates to vote was unlawful, meaning tens of thousands of criminals in Britain will be able to have a say in elections.
The ruling represents a direct rebuttal of Parliament, which last year voted overwhelming to maintain the 140-year ban.
However, leaked legal advice last year revealed that the UK would face little sanction if it simply ignored the ruling.
MPs said the ruling was a “test” for the Government and it was time for Mr Cameron, who has said the thought of giving prisoners the vote made him “sick”, to stand up to Europe.
Europe has gone mad.
1 comment:
It's not quite that bad. The Telegraph (much like it's lefty opposite, the Guardian) is good at missing out key points that don't fit its agenda. Its agenda in this instance is "Europe is evil".
The ECHR found that a blanket ban was unlawful. All that is required is for the legislation to be tightened. The ruling from the ECHR doesn't allow for one single prisoner to be allowed to vote who could not before. All the the ruling means is that the legislation is poorly drafted.
I am broadly opposed to the EU, at least as it currently works, but I can't really find much to criticise in this judgment.
Of course, it will be interesting to see if the government brings forward this amending legislation, or whether it would rather spend all its time on forcing through same sex marriage (despite, it seems, the majority of gay men and women thinking that is unnecessary), and forcing through a badly thought-out reform of the House of Lords, that will probably end up worse than the current one.
Hey ho.
Post a Comment