I want to approach this debate in something of a reflective manner—not to pre-empt the outcome of the committee headed by John Griffiths that I sit on, but I do want to, in opening, just thank both the prisoners and also the prison staff and officials of Parc prison, where we had a visit the other day. I was struck by how articulate, well informed and intelligent the discussions were with both the prisoners and the prison staff. Some of the prisoners remarked to us, in the group that we were in, 'You'd be surprised how well informed we are when we're locked up for 14 hours of the day, how much political television we watch and how many newspapers we read. We're very up to speed on it.' So, I just want to thank them and I'm looking forward to the visit tomorrow.

Can I just track back a little bit to why we are where we are? The reason we have the deprivation of the franchise from prisoners dates back to medieval times and the issue of civic death—the idea that if you entered prison, you forfeited your property. Because you had forfeited your property, you forfeited the right to vote, because the right to vote was predicated on the ownership of property, and so on. So, it's got a medieval—[Interruption.] Well, it's actually prior to that, it's medieval—1870 was the Forfeiture Act, which then actually talked about the issue of social contract as well.

So, there's a long, strange history within this, but if I bring it a little bit more up to date, since 2005, where there have been bans within countries on prisoner voting, this has been found to violate international human rights legislation. The ECHR, not an EU body—there's sometimes some confusion over that—remarked that the blanket ban on prisoner voting was indiscriminate and disproportionate. And, of course, as has already been remarked by several contributors to this debate, in November 2017, the UK Government indeed did give prisoners who were released on temporary licence—or on home detention, on remand, as we often call it, on detention, on curfew—the right to vote in the UK. In fact, guidance was sent out that year, and leaflets were given to all prisoners, we are told.

Now, in May 2018, the Scottish Parliament's Equalities and Human Rights Committee recommended lifting the ban in its entirety—and there is a spectrum of views on this—within Scotland, but this was rejected by the Scottish Government. Of course, as we've heard, the committee headed by John Griffiths, at the instigation or invitation of the Llywydd, is now looking at the issue in Wales, with our powers for the Assembly and local elections. And, of course, very recently in the debate that we had on 30 January, the Assembly voted 36 to 14 with one abstention in support of the principle of a vote for prisoners. I just note that that's short of the supermajority needed to actually change the view within this.

So, that concept, from the whole disenfranchisement to the whole enfranchisement, has several areas where the committee is looking with interest at this. The principle of it—. As we know from the Welsh Government consultation back in 2007, in that consultation, 50 per cent of the respondents agreed with prisoners being allowed to register for a vote and 48 per cent disagreed; a 2 per cent difference—where have we heard that before?—but very close. It looked at the issue of sentence length, whether or not sentence length should be a factor in deciding which prisoners should actually be eligible to have the franchise, or the severity of crime, and, of course, technical issues that we've heard referred to around method and the address. Just to remark, of course—and my thanks to library colleagues here within the Senedd for this—there are 4,700 Welsh people in prison, of which 37 per cent are held in England, so there are technical issues here, and there are 261 Welsh women prisoners, all of whom are held in 12 England prisons. So, there are technical issues, but they're not insurmountable. 

Now, if I can turn to some other issues that are pertinent to this: youth offenders. We went to Parc prison recently—. If we were, within this democratic institution, to reduce the voting age to 16 and 17, what would that mean in terms of young offenders as well? And just to address issues of other countries' examples, I mentioned earlier that different countries have different approaches, the majority of democratic countries now extend the franchise in different ways to the prison population, but it is in different ways, and in different measure.

Could I just turn very, very briefly, in my closing remarks, to the concept of why, if at all, prisoners should have both? Former Conservative Home Secretary Lord Hurd said,

'If prisoners had the vote then MPs would take a good deal more interest in conditions in prisons.'

Can I turn attention to the suicide of Vikki Thompson, a transgender prisoner, because of the treatment and the abuse that she received in an all-male prison; the continuing failure to combat ongoing consistent rape and sexual assault behind bars in prison population; the fact that black prisoners make up 15 per cent of the prison population compared to 2 per cent of the country in total—they're over seven times more likely to be barred from voting while inmates? And I could go on. As the Canadian Supreme Court has stated,

'disenfranchisement is more likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy than a spur to reintegration.  Depriving at-risk individuals of their sense of collective identity and membership in the community is unlikely to instill a sense of responsibility and community identity, while the right to participate in voting helps teach democratic values and social responsibility'.

I'm looking forward to participating in the inquiry tomorrow when we go to prison in Gloucester, the all-women's prison. I think that this is an interesting inquiry, but I hope that it will give us some sense, here—light more than heat—about the way that this democratic institution may want to proceed.