My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, on moving it. As always, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I am sorry that I am outwith my party’s position on this but there are hawks and doves in both main parties when it comes to penal reform, and indeed when it comes to the law-and-order arms race that I believe has been a problem in our country for too many years—perhaps for my whole adult life.
I remember Lord Hurd addressing the Conservative Party conference when I was a relatively small person—even smaller than I am now. Those were the days when all party conferences were televised in total—can you imagine?—and it was a time when people were calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. He, as a Conservative Home Secretary, faced that audience down and explained to them why that was a terrible thing. Later in my life and career I had the privilege to congratulate him on that moment, which he remembered, and it was something he could be proud of.
I believe this change will come because I am an optimist about the course of progress in world events. It may well be a Conservative Home Secretary and Government who do the “Nixon in China” thing, but whoever does it, I think they should. I will not cite the European Court of Human Rights, as some would groan and expect me to do. I do not pray in aid its judgments; I pray in aid basic principle and practical logic.
I agree with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made about the purposes of incarceration. We accept that some people in extremis need to be incarcerated for certain offences for the reasons of retribution, rehabilitation, public protection and deterrence, but none of those four traditional justifications for incarceration after criminal conviction explains why, on a blanket basis, you would take away someone’s vote—particularly people, as in this modest amendment, who will be out very soon and who we want to reintegrate and rehabilitate as best we can. Frankly, we want politicians, activists and voters to be a little bit more concerned about those people whom we are still subjecting to this Victorian notion of civic death.
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I will not bore the Committee with those endless Churchillian quotes about how we judge a society by how it treats its prisoners. Instead, I will quote the new and very dynamic chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Andrea Coomber QC, who says: “Denying prisoners the vote only ostracises them from the civic engagement that marks a healthy democracy. Voting, particularly for those who will soon be released, is an important signal of a commitment to rehabilitation and reintegration. We should be championing prisoner voting, not banning it.”