UNITED KINGDOM

MPs kick out ECHR ruling on prisoners

Published on 11 February 2011 at 10:58

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“Day we stood up to Europe,” headlines the Daily Mail, after British MPs “defied” a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that prisoners be granted the right to vote. In what the resolutely Eurosceptic daily terms “six hours of impassioned debate” MPs voted by 234 to 22 not to relax a 140 year ban on convicts taking part in elections, “because those who commit a crime have broken their contract with society”. In 2004, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British ban was discriminatory, after a legal challenge by John Hirst, convicted for axing his landlady to death in 1979. “The decisive stance plunged Parliament into an unprecedented stand-off against the ECHR,” the London daily notes, before adding - "Britain's Parliament, for too long supine in the face of the erosion of its powers and prerogatives by European institutions, has finally struck back."

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