Votes for prisoners: Still a reform too far?

Raminder Samrai 

Cross-posted from Our Kingdom,

As the party conference season approaches, political observers will be paying close attention to potential fault-lines within the governing coalition.

Yet those searching for tests of the coalition’s internal cohesion might be advised to look further afield than Liverpool and Birmingham this autumn – starting this week in Strasbourg.  At its 1092nd meeting on Human Rights, scheduled for 14 and 15 September, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers will consider how to respond to the UK’s continued denial of voting rights to prisoners. If ever there was a question likely to divide Liberal Democrat and Conservative opinion, it is surely this one.