Britain given deadline on prisoner votes after Government rights appeal fails

Prime Minister David Cameron – who said the thought of granting the vote to criminals made him physically ill – now has six months to produce “legislative proposals” ending the blanket ban on inmates voting.

The ultimatum was delivered by a five-judge panel of the European Court of Human Rights, which last November awarded two UK prisoners 5,000 euros (£4,350) for their loss of voting rights, which was ruled a breach of their human rights.

On Monday the court dismissed an appeal hearing request and decreed the original verdict final.

A statement issued by the Court last night said: “The Court now gives the UK Government six months from 11 April 2011 to introduce legislative proposals to bring the disputed law in line with the (European Human Rights) Convention.

“The Government is further required to enact the relevant legislation within any time frame decided by the Committee of Ministers, the executive arm of the Council of Europe, which supervises the execution of the Court’s judgments”.

More than five years ago the same court delivered a similar verdict in a separate case brought by a prisoner, but the then Labour Government left the blanket ban in place.

Last November’s second ruling came in a case brought by prisoners named as Robert Greens and M.T, both serving time at Peterhead prison.

By then Mr Cameron’s coalition Government had announced that it reluctantly accepted there was a legal obligation to offer voting rights to at least some prisoners, and scrap the total ban.

Minister for Political and Constitutional reform Mark Harper said at the time: “I think every member in the House is exasperated about this but we have no choice about complying with the law.”

The next day Mr Cameron told MPs: “It makes me physically ill to contemplate giving the vote to prisoners. They should lose some rights including the right to vote.”

But he said the Government had to comply – or face possible compensation claims running into millions in a flood of new human rights claims by inmates.

The UK is among a few European countries, including Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary and Romania, which automatically remove voting rights from sentenced prisoners