Prisons

Prisoners' rights - life prisoner refused access to artificial insemination facilities to start family with wife - refusal lawfulR (Mellor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Master of the Rolls Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lords Justice Peter Gibson and Latham):4 April 2001The applicant was convicted of murder in February 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The tariff element of his sentence was scheduled to expire in 2006, by which time he would be 35.In 1997 he met and married his wife while in prison.

She would be 31 in 2006.

Supported by his wife the applicant sought permission in 1997 to inseminate his wife artificially.

The home secretary refused the request because there were no exceptional circumstances.

The application for judicial review of the secretary of state's decision was refused.

The applicant appealed.David Pannick QC and Florence Krause (instructed by AS Law, Liverpool) for the applicant.

Dinah Rose (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the secretary of state.Held, dismissing the appeal, that one purpose of imprisonment was to deprive the prisoner of certain rights, including the right to procreate and to found a family; that the prison service policy of refusing a prisoner access to facilities for artificial insemination in order to start a family with his wife in the absence of exceptional circumstances was neither unlawful, irrational nor in breach of articles 8 or 12 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights; and that, since there were no exceptional circumstances, the secretary of state had been entitled to refuse the applicant's request for such facilities.

(WLR)