Tuesday 9 March 2010

UK Warned Over Voting Rights

The 1078th Committee of Ministers meeting took place last week and one of the issues under consideration was the ongoing saga with voting rights for prisoners.

The Committee of Ministers released their decision yesterday strongly urging the UK to allow prisoners to vote at the general election.

The deputies

  • reiterated their serious concern that a failure to implement the court's judgment before the general election and the increasing number of persons potentially affected by the restriction could result in similar violations affecting a significant category of persons, giving rise to a substantial risk of repetitive applications to the European Court; and
  • strongly urged the authorities to rapidly adopt measures, of even an interim nature, to ensure the execution of the court's judgment before the forthcoming general election.

Ultimately, though, there is little more the Council of Europe can do, apart from kick us out which is very unlikely and as I suggested here the forthcoming election will not be invalid or illegal.

The Committee will reconvene in June:
6. decided to resume consideration of this item at their 1086th meeting (June 2010) (DH) in the light of further information to be provided by the authorities on general measures.
June would coincide nicely with the emergency budget that is likely to occur should the Tories win the election in May, the perfect day to give in when we're all pre-occupied by the mess the economy is in.

hattip: witterings from witney

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