Constitutional

Prisoners' rights - statutory disqualification from voting in elections - compatible with convention rightsR (Pearson and Another) v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Others; Hirst v Attorney-General: DC (Lord Justice Kennedy and Mr Justice Garland): 4 April 2001The applicants were prisoners, two of whom sought judicial review of decisions by electoral registration officers to refuse by virtue of section 3(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 to enter their names on the electoral register.

The other sought a declaration under section 4(2) of the Human Rights Act 1998 that section 3(1) of the 1983 Act was incompatible with article 3 of the first protocol and article 14 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, as scheduled to the 1998 Act.Edward Fitzgerald QC and Phillippa Kaufmann (Hickman & Rose) for the applicants in the first case.

Florence Krause (instructed by AS Law) for the applicant in the second case.

Rabinder Singh and Karen Steyn (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor), the Solicitor, Weymouth & Portland Borough Council, Weymouth, and the Borough Solicitor, Elmbridge Borough Council, Esher, for the respondents.Held, refusing the applications, that section 3(1) of the 1983 Act which disqualified persons, detained in penal institutions pursuant to service of their sentences, from voting at parliamentary or local government elections was compatible with article 3 of the first protocol and article 14 of the convention; that the implied right to vote enshrined in article 3 was not absolute; that contracting states had a wide margin of appreciation in subjecting the right to conditions, provided that conditions did not curtail the rights so as to impair their essence or remove their effectiveness, were imposed in pursuit of a legitimate aim and the means employed was proportionate and did not thwart free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature; that those requirements were satisfied by section 3(1) and parliament considered that convicted prisoners in custody had forfeited their right to have a say in the way the country was governed; that in relation to discretionary life prisoners who were not released on licence there was no breach of the article 14 requirement not to discriminate in securing convention rights because there was objective, reasonable justification for their continued custody and considerations of article 3 applied.