The following amendments have been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Rebecca Evans, and amendments 2 and 3 in the name of Darren Millar. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2 and 3 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected.

The next item therefore is the UKIP debate on prisons and prisoners. I call on Neil Hamilton to move the motion—Neil Hamilton.

Motion NDM6966 Gareth Bennett

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Believes that prisons should be places of reform and rehabilitation, and that imprisonment is a punishment for those found guilty of a crime.

2. Resolves that prisoners should not be given the right to vote in Welsh elections.

Motion moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I beg to move the motion standing in the name of Gareth Bennett on the agenda today. I'd like to say right at the start of this debate that I very strongly believe in rehabilitation of prisoners and in prison reform. As a member of the bar for 40 years, I've many times in the past represented as an advocate pro bono prisoners sometimes convicted of very serious offences, in one case a double murder. And, subsequently, when they've been released from prison, I've continued to represent them to obtain justice where I think they've been unfairly treated and have been the victims of injustice. If I thought that there was any substantial rehabilitative value in extending votes to those serving custodial sentences, I would be very much in favour of it, but I'm afraid I don't. 

The change in the law that is in prospect in England, and Scotland and Wales too, arises from a case brought in the European court by a man who is about as unmeritorious as you could possibly imagine—John Hirst, a man who spent an entire lifetime in violent crime and killed a woman with whom he'd been lodging whilst on parole from a two-year burglary sentence with an axe, hitting her seven times, and said that, whilst he'd been lodging with her for a mere 11 days, because she nagged him consistently when he went out, he felt no remorse and bashed her with the axe. He pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter. Amazingly, the then head of the Crown Prosecution Service accepted that on grounds of diminished responsibility. But the judge, sentencing him to 15 years in prison, said:

'I have no doubt you are an arrogant and dangerous person with a severe personality defect.... Unfortunately, this is not suitable for treatment in a mental hospital.'

Whilst in prison, Hirst attacked a prison officer, leading him to be transferred to a high security unit reserved for the most dangerous prisons and he served 25 years due to violent behaviour and other offences whilst in prison, being released in 2004. So, it's not a very good start, I think.

The case went before the European Court of Human Rights and he succeeded ultimately in his claim that the law as it now stands in the United Kingdom was insufficient to protect the human rights of prisoners. Under protocol 1, article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights he succeeded, which merely says that: 

'The High Contracting Parties'— the United Kingdom being one of them—

'undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.'

So, that's a very broad general principle, as is typical, in fact, of the legal language of the European Convention on Human Rights, giving immense freedom to judges to interpret in the way that they think fit. It is in my view an arrogation of the rights of democratic institutions like the Welsh Assembly or the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and I think it is dangerous for judicial activism of this kind of take place because, once the judges have taken a decision, there is ultimately no appeal, and the people are not able to change the judgments of judges in the European court because you can't do that unless you can change the convention, and that is an extremely difficult thing to do, and anyway the language in which it's cast makes it impossible to do in specific instances, which is why my belief is that we should repatriate the European Convention on Human Rights and legislate for our own Bill of Rights, which democratically elected persons can change in appropriate cases. The European Union's charter of fundamental rights in article 39(2) provides a similar kind of provision, which has also been litigated in the European Court of Justice. All that says is that MEPs

'shall be elected by direct universal suffrage in a free and secret ballot.'

In the Delvigne case of 2015, a similar result to the Hirst case arose out of it. Now, Lord Hoffman, who is no fire-breathing right winger, said of the European Court of Human Rights that it had been

'unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and impose uniform rules on member states', and Geoffrey Robertson QC, a paragon of liberalism, said in a pamphlet he wrote called 'Why we need a British Bill of Rights' that the European convention fails, actually,

'to include the rights Parliament won by the "Glorious Revolution" in 1689', and mounting evidence exists that the weasel words of the European convention are damaging other basic rights, and the convention is in some respects out of date.

So, whatever one things about the substantive issue—[Interruption.] Yes, I will.

Neil, thank you so much for giving way. I just want to make the observation that, even under the ECHR determination, and their previous judgments, there are European countries who operate with no restrictions on voting rights—in effect, a universal franchise for prisoners. There are others who operate with restrictions. They've interpreted exactly the same determination in very different ways. They've applied their sovereignty even under that judgment.

They don't have the sovereignty to make the decision that anybody serving a custodial sentence should not have the right to vote, and I think it's perfectly proper in a democratic country that the elected representatives of the people should be able to make that choice if they think it's in the best interests of their own people. Because the European convention does of course give the right to freedoms that nobody would contest, and everybody thinks it is a good thing. But, in depriving somebody of their liberty, we're depriving them of other fundamental rights under the convention or the charter of fundamental rights. Prisoners retain a right to a family life whilst in prison; they can't pick their children up from school or kiss them goodnight. They retain the right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, but by definition they lose the right to freedom of assembly.

Anybody who ends up in prison, assuming that they're rightfully convicted, of course had a choice to make before he or she committed a crime, that they could actually not commit the crime and act within the law, knowing that, if convicted and sent to prison that one of the things that they would lose along with their freedom to move around outside the prison walls is that they would lose the freedom to vote. It seems to me that that is a perfectly acceptable position for anybody who has the trust of the people elected by them, as we are in this institution, to hold. Indeed, Chris Bryant, the Member of Parliament for the Rhondda, in a speech in the House of Commons in 2011 said this:

'it is not the role of the European Court of Human Rights to legislate on who gets to vote in the UK. As the President of the Court and others argued in their dissenting opinion on Hirst,' because it was a 12 to five majority that gave Hirst his judgment,

'"it is essential to bear in mind that the Court is not a legislator and should be careful not to assume legislative functions."

'That is why we argued'— this is what Chris Bryant said—

'in the Grand Chamber'— and it was a Labour Government that he was talking about—

'That is why we argued in the Grand Chamber that the Court was acting ultra vires and why we believe it is for Parliament—and Parliament alone—to legislate on this for the UK.'

I give way.

I don't think that we should get too hung up on the European Court of Justice. We're about to leave it. You and many other people, like Theresa May, are very obsessed about this. Just let's look at the objective, which is to support the reintegration of prisoners into normal life and to tackle our appalling record on recidivism. Clearly, we are spending loads of money on something that's not working.

I strongly agree with the latter point that Jenny Rathbone makes. If I thought, as I started out by saying, that there was any worthwhile rehabilitative value in giving prisoners the right to vote, I would support doing that. I don't, in fact, think that there is, and I do believe that it should be open to society to express its revulsion at criminal offences by removing the right to vote from those who have other rights removed from them by virtue of the fact of imprisonment itself. Certainly, it should be for institutions such as the National Assembly to take that decision, not unelected judges in courts in Strasbourg. It's the European Court of Human Rights that we are dealing with here, not the European Court of Justice. So, we will not be leaving the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights, and we will still have to observe the decisions of those judges.

The Government at UK level has proposed some minor changes that have actually been accepted now by the Council of Ministers as fulfilling the judgment in the Hirst case. They are relatively limited in effect, and I'll just read them into the record. There are five of them. Prisoners on remand can vote. Prisoners committed to prison for contempt of court can vote. Prisoners committed to prison for default in paying fines can vote. Eligible prisoners released on temporary licence can vote. And prisoners released on home detention curfew can vote. I hope that, in conformity with the judgment of the European court, when the Welsh Government puts its proposals forward after it has considered the report of the equalities committee, they won't go one jot or tittle beyond that, because I think that there is absolutely no public support whatsoever for giving prisoners the vote. If we had a people's vote on this issue, I've no doubt that there would be a very heavy majority against doing so. So, I think that the Government has a heavy responsibility on its shoulders if it wants truly to represent the people, not least in Labour constituencies, to keep the legislation to the minimum possible. 

I have selected the three amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2 and 3 will be deselected. I call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government to move formally amendment 1, tabled in the Rebecca Evans.

Amendment 1—Rebecca Evans

Delete all and replace with:

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Believes that prisons should be places of reform and rehabilitation.

2. Supports the principle of voting rights for prisoners at Welsh elections, but awaits the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee’s report.

Amendment 1 moved.

Formally.

I call on Mark Isherwood to move amendments 2 and 3, tabled in the name of Darren Millar—Mark Isherwood.

Amendment 2—Darren Millar

Add as new points after point 1 and renumber accordingly:

Welcomes the focus by the Ministry of Justice on rehabilitative services, community sentences and reducing reoffending.

Notes that the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee have an ongoing Inquiry into voting rights for prisoners.

Amendment 3—Darren Millar

In point 2, delete ‘prisoners should not be given the right to vote in’ and replace with ‘existing prisoner voting rights should not be extended in future’.

Amendments 2 and 3 moved.

Diolch, Llywydd. Prisons should be places of reform and rehabilitation, and imprisonment is a punishment for those found guilty of a crime. The UK Ministry of Justice is focused on rehabilitative services, community sentences and reducing reoffending. Last August, I attended the event in Wrexham held by HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales to discuss the 'Strengthening probation, building confidence' paper, under which all offender management services in Wales will sit within the National Probation Service from next year. The HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales will explore options to commission rehabilitative services, such as interventions and community payback. They'll build on the unique arrangements that they already have in Wales through their established prisons and probation directorate and on existing successful local partnerships, better reflecting the devolved responsibilities of the Welsh Government.

The UK Government's prison reforms are about replacing ageing and ineffective prisons with buildings fit for today's demands. The UK Government has rejected community prisons for women in England and Wales, and will instead trial five residential centres to help women offenders with issues such as drug rehabilitation and finding work. The Ministry of Justice is also considering banning short prison sentences in England and Wales, with Ministers stating that short jail terms are less effective at cutting reoffending than community penalties.

The Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee are currently undertaking an inquiry into voting rights for prisoners, yet this is the second debate in a fortnight seeking to pre-empt this. I move amendment 2 accordingly. In a 2017 YouGov survey, only 9 per cent of people in Wales said that all prisoners should be allowed to vote. It is not having boundaries that contributes to offending, but a lack of them. Rights go with responsibilities, and not voting is just one of the facts of life arising from being in prison, reflecting a decision by the community that the person concerned is not suitable to participate in the decision-making process of a community. Prisoners in the community on temporary licence can now vote, and the UK Government has also said that it should be made more clear to people given prison sentences that they will not have the right to vote while in prison. Unconvicted prisoners being held on remand and civil prisoners jailed for offences such as contempt of court already have the right to vote by postal ballot, although very few do.

We heard in Parc prison that few prisoners would either use a right to vote, or see it as an incentive to rehabilitate. Existing prisoner voting rights should not be extended in Wales beyond this, and I move amendment 3 accordingly. Our focus should instead be on giving offenders opportunities to contribute, make amends and build positive lives.

In December, I hosted an Assembly event with Construction Youth Trust Cymru and the Construction Industry Training Board, celebrating the success of the Clean Slate Cymru project, and launching the Clean Slate Cymru toolkit. The Clean Slate Cymru project aims to support people with convictions into construction employment, and the Clean Slate Cymru toolkit is a practical guide on how the construction industry can engage with ex-offenders in prisons and communities across Wales, and achieve social value. As part of the project, pilots were delivered across Wales, including an industry day in HMP Parc and careers fairs and work placements in HMP Berwyn.

Opening the first ex-armed forces personnel wing in the UK in 2015, Parc prison provides focus for specialist veteran support services that work outside the prison, such as peer mentoring services, employability and transition into life on the outside. Supporting Transition of Military Personnel, or SToMP, also has a whole-system approach to ex-armed service personnel, which supports them from police call-out to resettlement in the community. SToMP has implemented an all-Wales prisoner pathway to ensure consistent identification of, and support for, ex-armed service personnel across all prisons in Wales.

Last November, Parc was only the second prison in the UK and the first in Wales to be awarded autism accreditation by the National Autistic Society. However, sadly, the state of devolved services after two decades of Labour-led Welsh Government was again exposed this week by the damning independent report that found that half the men released from HMP Cardiff have nowhere to stay when they're released, and many will deliberately reoffend in order to be sent back to prison. It is that sort of failure that must be our focus, utilising the sort of projects I've referred to, rather than other measures that might satisfy the egos of individuals, but will make very little difference.      

It's good to speak in this debate today as Chair of the Equalities, Local Government and Communities Committee, Llywydd, because, as has already been mentioned, this is the second debate in short succession covering work the committee that I chair is currently undertaking as to whether prisoners in Wales should have the right to vote in Assembly and local elections. As part of that work, we are dealing with the issues in the round, as to whether there should be a blanket lifting of restrictions on the right of prisoners to vote, or whether there should be distinctions drawn between prisoners who would have that right and those who wouldn't. So, we've been looking at issues such as whether categories of prisoner on the basis of the sentence that they receive, or their release dates, or the type of offence, might be used to decide whether they should vote or not.

We're yet to come to a collective view. We have the UK position, as has been outlined, and I guess that's informative in terms of a possible starting point. We've undertaken visits, one to Parc prison, and one tomorrow to Eastwood Park to look at Welsh female prisoners in that English prison in Gloucestershire. Certainly, the visit to Parc was very informative in terms of hearing from prisoners and prison staff, and the director of the prison was quite forthright in saying that she believed that all prisoners should have the right to vote on a human rights basis, and that some of the practical considerations were certainly not so logistically difficult that they would prevent that happening, and that necessary arrangements, in her view, would have to be made and could be made. So, that was a very interesting visit, and I'm sure tomorrow will be very interesting too.

I also think, Llywydd, it's been quite informative in terms of our consultation process, in terms of hearing the public and organisations with a view, because it has, actually, been quite balanced, in terms of those for and against giving prisoners the right to vote and whether distinctions should be drawn and how they might be drawn. And it's certainly doesn't bear out the view that people are almost unanimously of the view that prisoners shouldn't have the right to vote at all. It's been far more nuanced than that.

So, we are in the middle of taking oral evidence and in the middle of the committee's inquiry. We will be taking further oral evidence from a range of organisations and, of course, from the Minister in due course. We aim to publish our report after the Easter recess. So, I hope very much that, in the debates and consideration that we're having—the previous debate and this debate, Llywydd—the work of the committee is duly recognised and indeed respected, because we are going through, I think, a very important process. And it will, I think, put a body of evidence on the table that I hope all Members will look at very carefully in due course before fully forming their own opinions on these matters.

Now, prisoner voting is, I think, an important issue. I do have slight concerns about us bringing this debate today, because, as John Griffiths has just explained, there is an ongoing inquiry into this issue being carried out by the ELGC committee, of which I am a member. I think, in general, it isn't good practice to pre-empt the outcome of an inquiry, but, to be fair, we had a debate on various criminal justice issues in the Chamber a couple of weeks ago, which wasn't brought by us, in which both Labour and Plaid Cymru certainly sent out strong signals on this issue. So, I think that debate has already pre-empted the inquiry to some extent. 

To recap what was said a fortnight ago, Labour's Jane Hutt stated that the Welsh Government was awaiting the outcome of our inquiry but at the same time was preparing a Government Bill on this issue. Well, a Bill is a major undertaking and you don't prepare a Bill if you're not seriously intending to bring legislation in. So, I think this tells us that the Welsh Government has already decided that it will extend prisoner voting, although they are not explicitly stating that, despite the fact that we haven't finished the committee inquiry yet.

For their part, Plaid Cymru, who brought the debate, were keen to include prisoner voting in the wording of their motion. This gave us, I think, a strong indication that they wished to extend the prisoner voting franchise in Wales. So, again, I think this pre-empts the inquiry, certainly in spirit if not in precise wording. So, I think we are justified in bringing this debate today. Of course, I will endeavour to continue to listen to the evidence of the committee inquiry.

Now, my colleague Neil Hamilton has raised some of the major moral objections to allowing prisoner voting at all, which is basically the UKIP position—that far from wanting to extend the prisoner vote, we would rather ignore the absurd ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on this and allow no prisoner voting at all. If the major objection to this is that we need to comply with ECHR, then our position is this: we are leaving the EU and ECJ in order to have control over our own laws, after all that is what the majority of the people of the UK voted for. So, why don't we simply leave the ECHR as well and have our own British bill of rights? So, this is the political context in which we oppose the principle of prisoners having the right to vote.

Now, what our inquiry has already thrown up so far are the many logistical and technical difficulties that are likely to arise if you do go down the path of trying to extend the prisoner franchise. There are major difficulties, for example, over the registered address of prisoners. There are prisoners with Welsh addresses who are imprisoned in English prisons. So, some prisoners held in English prisons could be allowed the vote in a Welsh Assembly election. That will be difficult to organise. Even if they have that vote in theory, will they actually be able to cast their vote in practice? Conversely, there are English prisoners in Welsh prisons who won't be allowed to vote in an Assembly election.

Will you take an intervention on that?

Yes.

Is he aware that prisoners already exercise their right to vote? They tend to vote by post or proxy.

The right to vote, as far as I recall from our inquiry in Wales, was actually extended by that ECHR ruling and the application of it to—

Prisoners on remand.

Ah, prisoners on remand. Okay, that is a precise issue.

They're not convicted when they're on remand.

They're still in prison though, aren't they?

I think there is a basic—[Interruption.] There is a basic difficulty with prisoners on remand, but it's an interesting point that we need to look at.

Now, if I can return to what I was saying, conversely, there are English prisoners in Welsh prisons who won't be allowed to vote in an Assembly election. So, in many prisons, you will get prisoners on the same wing, some of whom will get a vote and others of whom will not. What you won't get is equality of opportunity, and the inequality may conceivably lead to lower morale on the wing rather than higher morale, so I think we do need to tread carefully here.

We did visit Parc prison, as John Griffiths mentioned. We did meet prisoners, we met prison officers and we met the prison director. Now, they do have a privileges system in that prison. I wondered would the privileges system be of any use in determining whether or not a prisoner might be allowed a vote—perhaps a naive idea. The prison director thought this was highly impractical and, on reflection, I think this would be unlikely given that you are then giving the prison director and the prison officers the right to say who can and who can't vote, which is probably itself fundamentally undemocratic. So, given all these difficulties, we are then led into the extremely murky waters of allowing all prisoners to vote. I really do think I agree with points that Mark Isherwood raised during the previous Chamber debate that the prospect of violent offenders like murderers and rapists getting the vote is not likely to win much support from the wider electorate. And he did quote again today the 9 per cent figure from a YouGov survey conducted in 2017. So, I think there will be very little public support for this. It wasn't in Labour or Plaid Cymru's manifestos; I think it's a bit rich trying to bring this in under the radar. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I approach this not because of an absolute aversion to the word 'Europe' and any institution that contains that descriptor is therefore wrong as a matter of principle and practice. My approach is somewhat different, although I did find Neil Hamilton's introduction to this debate at least had the virtue of an attempted argument on the basis of principle as well as waving newspaper headlines at us.

But let me say this: I think this is important—when I made a statement to this place as a Minister on 30 January last year, I made a statement that I hoped was rooted in principle and a philosophical commitment to the social justice and equality that should be the hallmark of this place. If we are to be a Parliament in the future, then the decisions we take and the approach we take to those decisions is of fundamental importance to the citizens of this country. For me, when we imprison somebody, when we incarcerate them, when we take away their liberty, we take away their liberty to do some of the things that Neil Hamilton described. What we do not do, and what we must never seek to do, is take away their identity, to take away their citizenship, to take away their rights as an individual and as a human being. That is a different proposition. The punishment they receive is a deprivation of their liberty, and that is the point at which we should begin.

But we should also begin at a different point of principle, a point of principle that is rooted in rehabilitation, and one of the weakest parts of the system we have for dealing with criminal justice in this country is the through-the-gate services as prisoners come to the end of their sentences and they are taken back to the community, and we discussed that with a topical and urgent question earlier this afternoon. For me, when I look at this issue, it is essential that we continue to treat people throughout their period in prison as citizens of this country and as citizens we hope will play an important part in their communities in the future, as responsible citizens. The proposal I made to this place I felt was a reasonable place to be, whereby somebody who is sentenced to prison for a period of time and where their release date is anticipated to be within the term of the authority—in this case it's local government, of course—being elected would be able to vote in elections to that authority. They will be citizens living in that place during the term of that authority being elected, and I thought that was quite an important principle, because we are not depriving somebody of their right to vote who will be held in prison over an extended period of time—a life sentence or a long sentence—but we're actually enabling somebody to choose the local authority, in this case, and to participate in an election where they themselves will live in that community during the term of that authority, and that is an important point to make. We already do this with remand prisoners, of course; they already do participate and are able to do so. They do so with a connected address—there are none of the issues that the leader of UKIP attempted to articulate in his contribution. None of those issues are either relevant or have been, at any time, issues where difficulties have arisen. And let me say this: it is important that we do this in a reasoned way that is rooted in principle, rooted in a philosophical commitment to social justice, but also where there is a practical application.

It is clear to me that the arrangements and structures are already in place, and certainly, as a Minister, I was very, very clear that there were no major practical impediments to this being delivered. The structures we have in place, the right of a prisoner to receive correspondence from an electoral returning officer already exists, the right of a prisoner to receive that correspondence in private and to make a determination on the basis of that correspondence already exists. The Electoral Commission have already made an assessment of how this could operate in practice, and the relevant legislation was already amended back in 2000 to enable this to happen. So, there are no practical applications and practical issues on this matter. It is who we are as a country, as a people, as a community that matters to me. I want to see prisoners who are being held at the moment in prisons either here or elsewhere to be released at a point at which they will become responsible citizens of this country. And we need to start treating them as responsible citizens not at the point at which they are released, but at the point where they are still held in custody, where we are able to begin the process of rehabilitation.

One of the real crises—and I'm sure Mr Hamilton is aware of this—is that rehabilitation's always started when it's been too late and when it's already going to fail. What we need to do is to ensure that we are able to do that as a cohesive and holistic approach from the beginning. So, I hope that we will vote this afternoon to support those principles and that the committee, during its work, will also come to that conclusion and we will be able to legislate on these matters before the end of this Parliament.

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.

I call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government—Julie James.

Diolch, Llywydd. I welcome the opportunity to restate the Welsh Government's commitment to working to ensure that prison is an environment that is safe and secure, enabling staff and resources to concentrate on the rehabilitation of offenders. The first statement in the UKIP motion is inherently contradictory. The decision to send someone to prison and deprive them of their liberty is obviously an act of punishment in itself. Once that punishment is achieved, we should focus on rehabilitation. I strongly believe that the focus in prisons should be on rehabilitation and reconnecting inmates with the values of society at large. 

Of course, the prison service is the responsibility of the UK Government. The Welsh Government works closely with the Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service to provide devolved services that are vital in maintaining prisoner welfare and reducing reoffending. We reject the Conservative amendments, which appear designed to ignore the very large contribution made by devolved services.

I will run quickly through some of the services we provide in partnership with the prison service in Wales, which clearly demonstrate our commitment to the rehabilitation purpose of prison. The Welsh Government is working with local health boards in Wales to improve the health and well-being of prisoners in the Welsh prisons. Our priorities include mental health, substance abuse and medicines management. These services are key to ensuring inmates are suitably prepared for returning to life outside the prison walls. Access to good-quality education and links into work are a vital part of the Welsh Government's approach to reducing reoffending. Working with the prison service, we have developed our employability plan, which supports prisoners into further learning and good-quality work on release. Our aim is to ensure that offenders have access to a continuum of support as they return to their home communities.

We're also working with crime and justice agencies and local authorities to improve the housing options available, in order to overcome many of the accommodation problems confronted by many prisoners on release. In particular, as we discussed in today's earlier topical question, we want to ensure prison leavers' housing needs are assessed while they are still in custody, and the resettlement process is seamless from the wing to the community. And as was also said earlier, far too many resort currently to rough sleeping, and failures to adequately plan prior to release is a major factor in that, as we discussed in our topical question.

But in considering rehabilitation, we cannot ignore the effect of sending so many women to prison, often for low-level summary offences, which, in my personal view, are entirely inappropriate for prison sentences in the first place. I therefore welcome the female offending blueprint that was developed by my predecessor in post, Alun Davies, and which we worked on together for quite a long time, and developed jointly with the prison and probation service, to help identify the additional support needed for the delivery of appropriate justice services for women in Wales. I am pleased that the UK Government is at last looking at the use of short-term sentences. The so-called 'short, sharp shock' approach to sentencing simply does not work. Those handed short-term custodial sentences are often not in prison long enough to be able to complete the available education programmes and substance misuse treatments designed to achieve rehabilitation, and usually just long enough—as was said, I think, by David Melding earlier in the topical question—to disrupt jobs, homes and families, and to achieve nothing of any merit to anyone.

Our approach to youth justice is wholly focused on early intervention and preventative activity to divert young people from offending and promote their welfare. We provide funding through the promoting positive engagement for young people at risk of offending grant, which offers preventative and diversionary support to young people at risk of offending. I think that is sufficient to illustrate that the Welsh Government does a great deal in developing a holistic approach to rehabilitation with the benefit of making our communities safer.

The Welsh Government also rejects the second prong of the UKIP motion and the second of the Conservative amendments. I am very clear that I support the principle of some prisoners being able to vote at Welsh elections, for the reasons that a number of colleagues set out. Having the right to vote would send very strong messages to these prisoners that they have a stake in society and, in turn, that they have responsibilities towards that society as a whole. The support services I have outlined in the first part of my speech demonstrate how big that stake is, and I have barely touched on the support prisoners' families are likely to call on from devolved services whilst family members are in prison. 

The Welsh Government is looking carefully at all the issues around the possibility of allowing prisoners to vote at Welsh elections. We invited views on the principle of allowing some prisoners to vote in Welsh local elections in our consultation on local government electoral reforms in 2017, as has been set out by both Alun Davies and Huw Irranca—and by John Griffiths in talking about his committee work. As Huw Irranca said, the views expressed were finely balanced: 50 per cent of responses favoured allowing prisoners to vote in local government elections, 48 per cent disagreed, and 2 per cent did not express a view either way. There is a strange echo of other asking-the-public questions there.

There are some complex implementation issues to consider and address, but as Alun Davies said, we have already looked at those quite extensively, and they don't pose any particular administrative difficulty. In particular, the fact that many prisoners from Wales, including all women prisoners, are actually accommodated in England, and about 30 per cent of inmates in the five Welsh prisons are from England—that doesn't pose a problem, because those prisoners will be obviously voting by post, as do many people who have Welsh-domiciled addresses who find themselves not in Wales or not at their normal place of voting during a voting time.

We are preparing legislation for introduction later this year that will allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in local government elections in Wales, and the Llywydd only today introduced similar measures for the Senedd. In considering prisoner voting, we will be also looking at the implications for young offenders in those circumstances. But as many people have said, I am very mindful that the issues around prisoner voting, including the implications for young offenders, are currently being examined by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee. I'm not going to presume the committee's conclusions; we have not reached any final decisions and we do await the committee's report. I do not share Gareth Bennett's and UKIP's cynicism in regard to democracy, and we do anxiously look forward to taking into account the committee's report in this regard. Diolch.

I call on Neil Hamilton to reply to the debate. 

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. We've had an interesting debate, and I think it's been measured and temperate, as it should be. It's an important issue for democracy, but it's also, beyond that, as Alun Davies pointed out in his speech, which I thought was an extremely good speech, about the way in which we treat people even though they are incarcerated and outside the scope of general society. I strongly believe that prisoners should be treated in a humane way. I've been involved for many years with a charity that was set up by Lord Longford, who was a great friend of mine, called the New Bridge to reintegrate ex-prisoners into society, and I appreciate the excellent work that they've done. Mark Isherwood, in his contribution, referred to others, like Clean Slate and SToMP, doing similar work. This is absolutely vital if we are to reintegrate people into society as law-abiding individuals. Prison, of course, has a deterrent purpose and a punishment purpose, but it's no good if at the end of it people have learned nothing and simply reoffend, and as Jenny Rathbone pointed out in her intervention in my speech earlier on, recidivism is an important element of this, and whether granting prisoners the right to vote is going to have any impact, I very much doubt. I do believe that it's a matter for us as legislators to decide—not judges, least of all foreign judges—whether, as part of the punishment for the commission of crime, prisoners lose the right to vote whilst they are inside. Huw Irranca-Davies, of course, in his contribution gave us a bit of the history: of course, before the 1830s, the right to vote was very largely a property right and not a right in the sense that we would understand it today as a democratic right, and the Forfeiture Act of 1870 was the start of the process of removing the right to vote from prisoners in its modern context.

I strongly support what Alun Davies said about what happens to prisoners on release, and it's very important in advance of their being released that we should begin the process of reintegration. I can see the arguments for the proposition that he's put forward. I think it's an attractive proposition because you can see the practical purpose of it: prisoners reach the end of their sentences, they're getting to the end of the deterrent effect and the punishment effect of their sentence, and you can see, then, that the rehabilitative element is much more important, perhaps, than it is at the beginning. So, that's certainly something that I would be prepared to consider supporting as part of the process.

I'll say to John Griffiths, as the Chairman of the equalities committee, that this debate is not intended in any way to pre-empt the committee's report. One of the things that has most impressed me about this Assembly since I've been here is the way that these cross-party committees are genuine cross-party committees, and in their reports, they genuinely try to achieve a consensus that can inform the debate, and I hope that this debate, like the Plaid Cymru debate a couple of weeks ago, is part of the process—a contribution, if you like, to your work and not an attempt to supplant it or substitute for it.

I appreciate that the Minister was limited in what she could say in her speech by having to consider this issue once the equalities committee has produced its report. I do strongly agree with something that she said also in relation to the number of people serving sentences that are very short term that don't actually provide much of a deterrent effect and they certainly produce problems in prison. Prisons can be very brutalising places. I've been inside lots of prisons in the course of my life—as a lawyer, I hasten to add [Laughter.]—and places like Wormwood Scrubs and Strangeways and Wandsworth prison, as it used to be, were very dehumanising places, and actually set back the process of rehabilitation. So, the building of new prisons is a vitally important element, I think, in restoring people to civil society in a better way than they went in, and that, of course, is to the benefit of us all. But I remain to be convinced that an essential part of this process is granting prisoners the vote. We will await the results of the equality committee's deliberations and indeed, then, the Government's proposals. 

The proposal is to agree the motion unamended. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting on this item until voting time. 

Voting deferred until voting time.