Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Bill but I do not think we should be proud of ourselves on passing it. The need for this legislation is an implicit criticism of our society and us as legislators for allowing this state of affairs to continue for so long. I should have been aware of this matter but, like many others, I was ignorant of it. I do not believe we ever intended to bring legislation to prevent prisoners from voting. However, prisoners must have tried to draw attention to the anomaly preventing them from voting and the fact that we turned a blind eye indicates our lack of regard for the purpose of prisons.

Last week, when the Prisons Bill 2006 was before this House, the debate centred on the reasons for prisons, which include protecting society from criminals. However, one of the primary reasons for a prison is rehabilitation. We have allowed that to escape our attention, with the result that prisons are becoming universities of crime. I recently met the former Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who told me about his pride at ridding New York of crime during his time in office. However, he did not seem to have any sympathy for the concept of preventing prisoners from being reincarcerated subsequent to their release. The large prison population in the United States is in part due to the lack of attention given to rehabilitation in that country.

In that context, I am impressed that we have been directed by Europe to put our house in order. Some time ago, an eastern European politician appearing before the Joint Committee on European Affairs said he had put up with a Big Brother in Moscow for 40 years and was less than enthusiastic about a new Big Brother in Brussels who would impose European regulations. However, I can see the benefit of being criticised by Europe when we do not behave. This Bill does not arise from a conviction on our part to do right by prisoners but from a European Court of Human Rights ruling which suggested our system for dealing with the voting rights of prisoners was unsustainable. Not for the first time, we have been forced by Europe into taking an action we should have taken on our own initiative. Accordingly, the Bill is certainly not a reason for congratulation.

The way in which prisoners are treated in this country is little short of barbaric. Once we send people to prison, we tend to forget about them. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that we throw away the key because we keep our prisoners both out of sight and out of mind. By doing so, we forget that when we imprison people, we take away their freedom and their status as citizens. Recently the concept of prison as a place of rehabilitation has become a joke. More often than not, they serve as universities of crime. While we pay lip-service to the rehabilitation principle, we make it almost impossible to achieve by virtue of the conditions we allow to persist in prisons. That is hypocrisy of the worst kind.

One of the difficulties in defending prisoners' rights is that if one does, one is accused of being soft on crime, which is quite ridiculous since there is no correlation or connection between the two. Our attitude to prisoners' rights does not demonstrate toughness towards crime. Instead, it shows our readiness to ride roughshod over the rights of fellow citizens on the flimsiest of justifications. There is no inconsistency in being tough on crime and defending prisoners' rights, the aim being to ensure that they become useful members of society.

I argue that the tougher we are on crime, the greater is our responsibility to ensure that we treat those whom we imprison according to the highest standards. In this Bill, we deal with a right that is important in our eyes, but it may not be so important to the majority of prisoners. There are many other rights that prisoners would choose to see implemented before they even mention the right to vote. In passing this measure, we should give some thought to the very many other ways in which we infringe prisoners' rights and on which the Bill does not touch. Passing this measure should encourage a better attitude on our part to the situation of prisoners generally, but I doubt very much whether that will happen.

The objective is not just to do good, rather it is an effort to rehabilitate and make good citizens of those prisoners so that they re-enter society with the objective of staying out of jail. From that perspective, I welcome the Bill. I am reluctant to congratulate my fellow Members on passing it, since it is a reflection on society that we have had to introduce it at the behest of Europe.