Seize jail vote payouts for victims says barrister MP

MPs last week voted to defy a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the blanket ban on prisoners voting is illegal, but Ministers claim they will have to pay tens of millions of pounds in compensation to prisoners if they do not change the rules.

Now Simon Reevell, the Dewsbury MP and a barrister, has urged Attorney General Dominic Grieve to take action to prevent that by making a simple change to existing legislation.

He says Ministers could amend the Limitation Act – introduced in 1980 and which sets time limits for suing – to allow victims to claim any money paid out to prisoners for being denied the vote.

Rather than leading to a windfall for victims, he hopes it would deter prisoners from taking the Government to court in the first place because the process would become pointless.

“We should take the very simple step of amending the Limitation Act 1980, so that anybody who receives damages arising from litigation on this subject can have the damages taken away by the victims of their crime,” he said.

“What prevents that at the moment is the time limit that has usually been exceeded before the convicted person is in funds and so the victim is precluded from claiming. It would take half an hour to draft the amendments to the Limitation Act that would solve that problem.”

Although Mr Reevell says he does not like the idea of prisoners voting, he rejects the notion that the UK should defy a ruling of the court arguing it is wrong to “pick and choose” which of its verdicts are accepted.

He is likely to press Ministers on his idea if the Government decides it has to come back to Parliament with plans to offer some prisoners the vote.

Ministers have been forced to address the issue after Bradford-born killer John Hirst won a case in the European Court of Human Rights fighting for prisoners to be entitled to vote.

But last week MPs overwhelmingly backed a motion asserting the right of Parliament to decide on the issue. Former Home Secretary David Davis and ex-Shadow Home Secretary Jack Straw led last week’s debate, with only 22 MPs – mainly members of the Liberal Democrats – defying their motion and effectively backing the right of some prisoners to cast their ballot in elections.

That has put Westminster on a collision course with the European Court of Human Rights, with Ministers now deciding how to proceed. The Government had proposed giving prisoners serving four years or less the vote in an attempt to comply with the court ruling, but that proved unpopular with many MPs and even Prime Minister David Cameron claimed it would make him physically sick to give inmates the right to vote.