The next item, item 5, is the debate on the Equality, Local Government and communities Committee report on voting rights for prisoners. I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion—John Griffiths.

Motion NDM7139 John Griffiths

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Notes the report of the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, 'Voting rights for prisoners', which was laid in the Table Office on 11 June 2019.

Motion moved.

Diolch yn fawr. I'm pleased to open today's debate on the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee's report on voting rights for prisoners.

I would like to start by thanking all those who contributed to our inquiry, either by giving written or oral evidence; the members of the public who contributed to our online discussion forum, and the respectful manner in which differences of opinion were discussed and debated, especially as these are matters of some controversy; and the prison staff and prisoners we spoke to during our visits to Her Majesty's Prison Parc and to Her Majesty's Prison Eastwood Park. Both gave us a real insight into the practicalities of introducing any change, but also enabled us to explore the broader points of principle with those most affected by any change, prisoners themselves. They were interesting and informative discussions. 

Having taken evidence, and after very careful consideration and weighing up of the ethical, practical and legal arguments, the majority of the committee recommended giving more prisoners the vote. As I said earlier, this is, of course, a controversial issue, and we were very conscious of the impact any change might have on victims of crime and explored this with all our witnesses. 

Part of the background to these matters is the ruling that the UK Government was in breach of the European convention on human rights by having a blanket ban on prisoner voting. Limited changes were then introduced, allowing prisoners on remand and on temporary licence, for example, to vote. The European Court of Human Rights has been clear that the right to vote is not a privilege. It has said that the presumption should be for including as many people as possible in democracy. Prisoners retain other rights when they enter prison. They may lose their liberty, but they do not lose their basic rights. I believe voting is such a right. 

One of the most compelling arguments we heard was that prisoners remain citizens of society. This was something that came across very strongly during our discussions at the prisons. We heard that many strive to stay an active part of their families' lives, despite the physical barriers. Llywydd, I would say that criminal justice policy in the UK results in overcrowded prisons, a lack of rehabilitation and high reoffending rates and that more effective reintegration into society means less crime and fewer victims of crime. It benefits our communities in general as well as ex-offenders and their families. Voting may be a small but significant signal towards a more enlightened and productive approach.

Removing the right to vote is also part of a process that treats prisoners as outsiders: they are not like the rest of us and should be treated differently. This is not good for them and not good for wider society. It hinders the process of reform and does not help with reducing reoffending or social cohesion. Many stakeholders told us they believe enfranchisement would help. Lady Hale, now President of the UK Supreme Court, as we've heard quite a lot about recently, said that retaining the vote would encourage civic responsibility and reintegration. It is also an important symbol. While there is not extensive empirical evidence to support this view, we were persuaded by the stakeholders who said that greater inclusion when in prison would help rehabilitation upon release. There are also a number of other arguments that informed our final views, such as international precedent, and the disproportionate effect the ban has on certain groups of people.

Llywydd, we then needed to consider what the franchise would look like. We ruled out basing it on the type of offence or release date, and settled on sentence length. I, along with some of the members of the committee, supported full enfranchisement. However, after careful discussion, we decided to recommend including prisoners serving sentences of less than four years. We felt that this was a suitable compromise that balanced the need for a simple electoral franchise; is easy to understand, which was a very strong theme throughout our evidence; is mindful of acknowledging the view of public opinion, which is against all prisoners having the right to vote; and ensures compliance with the European court judgment. It also recognises the significance the criminal justice system accords to four-year sentences, which are subject to less favourable terms for early release.

Llywydd, I'm very pleased that the Welsh Government has accepted our key recommendation and will be seeking to legislate to make changes for both Assembly and local government elections. I believe this shows real political leadership, and indicates that Wales remains at the forefront of respecting human rights. I would, however, like to seek some further clarity. The Llywydd and the Minister confirmed in correspondence that changes to the Assembly franchise will be taken forward by the Welsh Government. In her letter, the Minister said she would be seeking an appropriate legislative vehicle. But while she committed to changing the franchise for local government in this Assembly term, there is not the same commitment for the Assembly. So, Minister, I would be grateful if you could provide some clarity on your thinking on this, and whether the change will be in place for the next Assembly elections in 2021. The current provisions in the Government of Wales Act 2006 clearly link the Assembly and local government electoral franchises. If, Minister, you are not making the changes to both at the same time, can you outline if you are seeking to decouple them on a temporary basis? It is worth noting the evidence we received from the Electoral Commission that they should be consistent.

While I have focused then on the broader issues of whether prisoners should have the vote, our report also looked at the practicalities around method of voting, information and campaigning. I would ask the Minister to give an update on how discussions with the UK Government on the issues raised by the committee in recommendations 5, 6 and 10 are progressing. These specifically relate to designating an election co-ordinator within the prison staff, ensuring that all eligible prisoners are registered to vote and are supported to take part in relevant elections, and providing access to Welsh media for those prisons with a sizeable Welsh population.

Llywydd, I now look forward to hearing other Members' views on these important matters. I'm sure it will be an interesting debate because this has been a very interesting piece of work for the committee, and, I'm sure, for Assembly Members in general.

Joyce Watson took the Chair.

Prison is the sharp end of our justice system, and an important and integral part of the criminal justice system in every country. Depriving someone of their liberty for a period of time is one of the most significant powers available to the state. Prison plays a crucial role in upholding the rule of law, by helping to ensure that alleged offenders are brought to justice, and by providing a sanction for serious wrongdoing. Its core purpose is threefold: protection of the public; punishment, depriving offenders of freedoms enjoyed by the rest of society and acting as a deterrent; and rehabilitation, providing offenders with the opportunity to reflect on and take responsibility for their crimes, and prepare them for a law-abiding life when they're released.

As we heard in Parc prison, few prisoners would either use a right to vote or see it as an incentive to rehabilitate. The committee admits in the report that the empirical evidence to support the theory that voting aids rehabilitation is 'limited'. The report also notes that when Cardiff prison took steps to encourage prisoners on remand to register to vote at the last election, not one took up the opportunity. Our focus should instead be on giving offenders opportunities to build positive lives. 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.

Following the European Court judgment referred to, some 17 per cent of prisoners are already eligible to vote. Prisoners in the community, on a temporary licence, can now vote, and both unconvicted prisoners being held on remand and civil prisoners jailed for offences such as contempt of court also already have the right to vote, although very few do. 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.

This report quotes a Welsh Government consultation, in which 50 per cent agreed that prisoners should be allowed to register to vote, and an Assembly Commission consultation, in which 49 per cent agreed that prisoners should be able to vote in Assembly elections if they were due for release during the period for which Members were being elected to serve. However, both these consultation responses were self-selective, rather than weighted representative samples. In contrast, only 9 per cent of people in Wales said that all prisoners should be allowed to vote in a 2017 YouGov survey.

It is not having boundaries that contributes to offending, but a lack of them. It is concerning that some committee members believed in the principle of votes for all prisoners. But despite that, the committee, as we've heard, only recommended that the Welsh Government and National Assembly legislate to give Welsh prisoners serving custodial sentences of less than four years the right to vote in devolved elections. For the reasons already outlined, Mohammad Asghar and I could not agree with that recommendation.

Responding to this report, the Welsh Government stated that it will work to introduce legislation in this Assembly to enable prisoners from Wales serving a custodial sentence of less than four years to vote in devolved local government elections. Responding on behalf of the Assembly Commission, the Llywydd stated that it does not consider that amendments should be introduced to the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Bill to address this issue. In a letter to the committee Chair last week, the Welsh Government added that it is committed to the principle of prisoner voting in all local elections, and it will seek an appropriate legislative vehicle at the earliest opportunity to enable prisoners from Wales to vote in Assembly elections on the same terms as will apply for local government elections.

To be clear, according to the Law Pages, giving the vote to prisoners serving a custodial sentence of less than four years will include those convicted of having a blade or sharp point in a public place, racially aggravated common assault, racially aggravated criminal damage, procurement of a woman by threats, attempted incest by a man with a girl over 13, abduction of an unmarried girl, causing prostitution of women, soliciting by men, ill-treatment of patients, assault with intent to resist arrest, and procuring others to commit homosexual acts, and many more. It is this that Labour and Plaid Cymru are supporting, further evidencing, dare I say, the growing gap between the expressed will of the people of Wales and their elected so-called representatives here.

I'm pleased that we're having this debate, and I'm just really disappointed at the Conservatives' contribution, not just today, but in the inquiry as well. I must admit that when our committee embarked on this inquiry I was sceptical. As a former probation officer, who keeps a keen interest in the justice system even though it isn't devolved, I thought it would be odd for us, as a committee, to rock up to various prisons to talk to prisoners about something that was in our interest. We're well aware of the range of problems that prisoners face, from homelessness to drug and alcohol problems, mental health, family breakdown, abuse, domestic violence, yet we were not going to the prisons to talk to people about those issues, we were asking prisoners and staff instead about their views on voting, presumably for us. I have to say that I felt a bit uncomfortable about it all. But how wrong could I be?

It soon became clear, on our visits, to HMP Parc and HMP Eastwood Park that some of these prisoners could see a way through our inquiry of putting their concerns on the agenda by having the vote. At present, who is listening to them? Do they have a voice at all? No, they don't. Prisoners have been forgotten and marginalised by policy makers, politicians and wider society, and here we have an opportunity to do something to change that.

There are disagreements as to the purpose of prison. Is prison solely about punishment? Should we make life in prison so awful for people that they would see it as a deterrent and be absolutely determined never to go back? If that's how we see it, then conditions and rights don't matter. Yet people then end up wondering why people who go through the prison system come out more damaged and more criminally inclined. Prison without a rehabilitation element is little more than a crime factory.

My view is that prison should not only be a punishment, but it should also be a tool to protect the public and to try and rehabilitate the person so that they don't commit further offences on release. A rehabilitative approach results in lower crime and a safer society, as any honest comparison between Scandinavian countries and the UK would reveal. We should be aiming to reduce the prison population by rehabilitating more people and treating people like the citizens that they are and that we want them to be. It is for these reasons that I support extending the franchise to prisoners and I endorse the recommendations of this committee report.

Being given the opportunity to vote is a reminder to prisoners that they are still a citizen despite being punished for a crime. It's a reminder that they are going to be released one day and that there are expectations on them as a citizen. Being allowed to put that cross in that box can help to reintegrate and include prisoners in wider society.

For me, although I was initially sceptical as to the usefulness of this inquiry to the prison population, I became more and more convinced that it was the right thing to do. It is nothing short of a scandal that if you are a woman sentenced to prison that you have to be incarcerated in another country with no access to your family, to the Welsh news, to your rehabilitation network and that alone should be a good enough reason to devolve the criminal justice system, so that we can do something just about that.

Voting is not a privilege and it shouldn't be seen as such. Voting is something that we should want all of our citizens to be doing. For me, this is a question where Wales could signal that we could things differently, more humanely with more compassion. This report gives the Government such an opportunity and I very much hope it takes it up.

I'm delighted to speak in support of the recommendations that came out of this committee, and to welcome as well the way in which John stewarded this committee. We heard an immense amount of evidence—those people who came in front of us, the visits that we made as well, where we spoke with prison governors, prison staff, front-line staff and also with people who are incarcerated themselves. I want to thank all those people who gave evidence, but particularly the way in which Members dealt with hearing that evidence as well. There were differences of opinion on this committee—they've come out in the report in terms of the main recommendation that we've come to—but we have done it in, I think, a temperate way. We've recognised those differences. I would simply say to Mark: I'm not a so-called representative. I am a representative in this institution, as everybody else is. Don't denigrate the role of myself or others by calling me a so-called representative.

However, if I can turn to the substance there, the report is balanced, because it does actually look at the arguments for and against as well. It makes clear that, as the European Convention on Human Rights has said, voting rights are not absolute rights—universal rights. That is exactly why this committee was looking at it. To what extent do we reflect public opinion? To what extent do we want to show leadership as well? But there is clearly, also, by international evidence, but also the pressure that's been put on the UK Government over successive years and years, a mood that we should actually look at this and see how much further we could go, very much because of the arguments that Leanne and the report put, which are that, whilst it might not be a universal, absolute right, we should be looking to individuals who are in prison not as—. Some will be lifelong prisoners, and some, including women we met, who said, 'Well, I've got children outside of this prison. I'm in here for a very short time. My children are in school. My children will be receiving care while I'm away from here. I have no say whatsoever in—'. Yet, still, those people who are in prison—all of them—will pay tax on earnings, tax on savings et cetera whilst they're in. So, it's a curious anomaly.

The report is balanced. It recognises—Mark, you're absolutely right—that the public does not support voting rights for prisoners. It does also reflect that the public mood is changing, and has changed on this as well. Sometimes, there's a need for us, as elected representatives, to actually signal a course—a direction of travel. I won't embarrass the Minister, but when she came in front of us in committee, I said, 'Minister, what is your mood toward all of this?', because I was slightly sceptical. I thought the Government might park this and kick this into the long grass: 'What an interesting committee report this is. We'll come back to this in five years or 10 years' time.' And I said to her, 'Do you see yourself, possibly, being the Roy Jenkins here of the Welsh Government Ministers on this issue?'—not that you should go above and beyond, and not that you should try and be cavalier in the way—. But look at the evidence and decide what is the right, progressive policy that balances those interests of people like the victims' commissioner, who came in front of us and spoke quite passionately about her concerns about the victims' side, but also very much that issue of rehabilitation—the fact that these people remain citizens, because they are paying tax, they have children outside in schools et cetera. So, I think it's quite balanced.

Now, the compromise we came to is a compromise. There were different views on the committee. There were those of us who supported, for simplicity but also on basic principles, the actual universal extension of that suffrage within there. Many of the witnesses who appeared in front of us actually supported that as well, for the very same reasons. But we recognised that, on the committee, because there were such differences of opinion, we should look at something that was practical, that was simple, that was deliverable and that wasn't overcomplex. We looked at many different possibilities within that, and the one we've settled on, of sentences of four years or less, gives that, I think, simplicity and clarity, and it gives that clear message that Wales, even if the UK Government won't move, could actually move forward and show a clear signal that we believe in the principles of rehabilitation—in the principles that these people, many of whom will be passing through prison, will be back living with us, alongside us and reintegrated in society, and bringing their children up and working in careers and so on and so forth. I think that's an important principle.

So, I welcome this and I welcome the response of the Government as well. My only query would be to echo what the Chair has said: what are we talking here about timescales of taking this forward? I think there is an opportunity here for the Welsh Government to show some leadership on this and, perhaps, who knows, the UK Government will follow suit in due course.

I thank the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee for their report on voting rights for prisoners. I was not a member of the committee during their inquiry, but had I been, I would have joined Mark Isherwood and Mohammad Asghar in opposing the recommendations. It must be noted that prisoners on remand do have the right to vote, and I do not agree with the premise that prisoners should be allowed to vote.

The right to vote, a right that people died to secure and a right that people have died to protect, is linked to our citizenship. Citizens of good standing, those who abide by the rules and laws of our society, gain the right to decide who makes the laws.

Caroline, I wonder if you'd give way just on that point.

Go on, Huw. 

It's simply to make the point: would you recognise that there is a significant proportion of the prison population that are actually ex-servicepeople? They're veterans who actually served our country on the front line, and they have got into the situation where they are in prison for a time. For us to write them off when we want them to be back and reintegrated into society is an unusual message.

Nobody has written anyone off, Huw, but what I am saying is that when people are rehabilitated, then they have the right to come back in and have that vote.

It’s been a long-established practice in our country that those who break the laws of our nation lose the right to have any say in the making of those laws, and we should not abandon that practice. By breaking our laws, prisoners have demonstrated their disregard for our society and its citizens, along with the victims of their crimes, and in every crime there is a victim. They should not have a say in how our country is run. I wholeheartedly reject any move to give prisoners the vote.

I also question the decision to set the cut-off at sentences of four years or less. This practically means that all prisoners serving time in Welsh prisons will be entitled to vote, as Wales does not have any category A prisons. Even Scotland has not gone this far—they set the cut-off date at 12 months. So, I do not support the committee’s recommendations and, in what must be a first for me, I am calling on the Welsh Government to consider the implications and reject those recommendations, because not only does this go against the wishes of the wider public, those pushing for this change accept it is broadly unacceptable to ordinary voters. So, once again, politicians are stating that they know what is best, and disregard public opinion. We are put here to serve our constituents, and we simply can’t simply ignore their wishes, whatever our own personal opinions may be. So, if Welsh Government press ahead with this policy, they will be—

Will you take an intervention?

Not another one, sorry.

They will be demonstrating how out of touch they really are with public opinion. By giving the vote to those who reject our society’s rules, you are in danger of disillusioning ordinary voters—voters who won’t turn out at future elections because they refuse to vote for an out-of-touch political elite. And for what? A handful of votes from people convicted of a criminal offence. Having worked in the prison service, I can tell you that the turnout, in somewhere like HMP Parc, will be nowhere near the 33 per cent who voted at the last Assembly election.

And for the reasons I have stated, I urge Members to reject these proposals.

This report by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, of which I was previously a member, makes 11 recommendations. The main recommendation is that Welsh prisoners who are serving custodial sentences of less than four years should have the right to vote in devolved Welsh elections. My colleague Mark Isherwood and I disagreed with this recommendation. I do so again today.

I object to this proposal in principle, and for practical reasons also. We as a society produce a framework of laws setting out standards of responsibility and commitment that we expect our citizens to maintain. People who have committed crimes against their fellow citizens do not meet those standards. So, if these people are not willing to follow the law, why should they have a role in making the law for everyone else?

The First Minister himself said in this Chamber yesterday, Presiding Officer, and the quote is:

'people who decide to be law makers give up the right to be law breakers.'

I believe the opposite is also true. There has been much talk of prisoners' civil liberty, but imprisonment, by definition, involves the suspension of the right to liberty. Civil liberties in a democracy combine the right to vote with the right to stand for election, freedom for association, assembly and movement. Offenders serving prison sentences are deprived of these civil liberties as a consequence of their actions. I strongly believe in the rehabilitation of offenders. The restoration of the right to vote demonstrates that an individual has paid their debt to society. It should be seen as an incentive to integrate offenders back into civic society. So, in principle, I object this proposal.

But there are also practical arguments against. The fact is, these proposals create a bureaucratic nightmare for staff employed in our already hard-pressed prison services. This report proposes that all prisons, wherever they are, have Welsh prisoners appointed an election co-ordinator within the prison staff. This represents an additional burden on prison staff. Wales does not have any women prisons, so Welsh women—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, go on.

Given that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was found guilty of breaking the law this week, do you think he should now not have the right to vote?

Listen—[Interruption.] Look, the thing is—

Should we lock him up? Lock him up, maybe?

Look, he did not harm the country. You're the one harming the country.

He's already harmed the country.

You are not listening to—. Presiding Officer, I had opinions in my own office in Newport: in a month, while I was a member of this committee, more than a 100 constituents—I asked them, and not a single one said, 'Yes, I would like to have the right to vote for the prisoner.' That is in South Wales East. Please do it in your constituencies and come back and report. [Interruption.] No, you've had enough, thanks.

Most people receive their news from the television in prison. This automatically puts Welsh prisoners in England at a disadvantage because there are no women prisons here in Wales—this was mentioned earlier. One of the strengths of our democracy is that electors have a chance to meet the candidate standing for election. It is totally impractical for candidates to travel to prison to meet potential voters in this case. Even this report recognises that the idea of holding practical hustings in prison is a non-starter because it poses significant security risk.

Presiding Officer, there is no support from the public or prisoners to have the right to vote. In 2017 a YouGov poll found that 60 per cent of people who responded did not support prisoner voting—that is YouGov.

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, go on. Go on.

Public opinion polls show time and time again that the general public is in favour of bringing back hanging. Do you therefore think we should bring back hanging in order to comply with public opinion?

But this is totally irrelevant to the prisoner—

It's not irrelevant, you're talking about public opinion.

Listen, I thought you're very intelligent lady, we are talking about—

Are you calling me stupid?

We are talking about voting not hanging.

Are you calling me stupid?

We are not—. I never said—. I thought you're very intelligent, but we are talking—

I think you need to be careful.

We are talking here—. No, I never said the word 'stupid' here. It is an indication of how out of touch this Welsh Labour Government is with public opinion. The Welsh Labour Government regards, as a priority, giving votes to villains, the franchise to felons, and ballots to burglars. Let Welsh Labour and Plaid seek the support of the Norman Stanley Fletchers of this world, if they wish. The Welsh Conservatives will always stand for the right of victims of crime and not for the right of the criminals. I urge this Assembly to reject this report. Thank you.

Wednesday afternoons don't get any better, do they? Do you know, I welcome the report from the committee. I also welcome the Government's response to that report, and I was very pleased to read the words of the Minister in her response.

I was very pleased when I made an oral statement on this matter in January of last year. All of us who have the privilege of serving the Government of our country will learn different things as a consequence of exercising our duties as part of that privilege, and, for me, understanding and coming into contact for the first time, really, with the criminal justice system, it left me with a very clear sense of a system that is broken and that is not serving the needs of this country, whether it be the victims or those who are held in custody in this country or elsewhere.

I became very convinced very quickly that we brutalise people in this system, that we brutalise our communities, and we do not either promote or deliver rehabilitation in any way at all. There is nobody here, in this place, despite some of the nonsense we've heard from some sides of this Chamber, who could take any pride at all in what happens—[Interruption.] I know my constituents, Oscar, they elect me; they don't know who you are. Let me tell you this—[Interruption.] Let me tell you this—[Interruption.] Let me you tell this: you should hang your head in shame, and so should all people on all sides of this Chamber who allow this situation to continue in our prisons.

I believe that it is right and proper that we extend the right to vote in certain elections to prisoners in this particular category. I think it is right and proper that we base a criminal justice system on our values and on our principles—our principles of social justice, our principles of what is right and proper, our principles that want to see real justice for victims of crime in this country, and that is a reduction in crime and a reduction in victims. I know of nowhere in the world where a more vindictive approach, a more brutal approach to criminal justice leads to more peace in a society. And, if people haven't learnt that yet, they need to perhaps do a little bit more learning before they read out somebody else's words.

Let me say this: we take seriously the removal of liberty from people. We take seriously the way in which we send people to prison and we place people in custodial institutions. But they lose their liberty in those places; they don't lose their human rights. They're still human beings—they're human beings who have rights in this community. They're also human beings who will return to our communities. In my community of Blaenau Gwent, there are, from Cardiff University research, about 50-odd people at the moment serving sentences in different institutions across Wales and England. It is right and proper that they are able to return to our community and that we provide them with the opportunity to learn, the opportunity to become the sorts of citizens we want them to be. It is right and proper that we treat them with the respect that they deserve as human beings—[Interruption.] It is right and proper—it is right and proper that we attempt to rehabilitate them into our society and our communities. That is how you create a better community and a better society. We don't need to debase this place with some of the language that we've heard this afternoon, and we don't need to debase our institutions by seeking the lowest common denominator on social media.

Let me say this: I've learnt a lot more than I thought I was going to learn in my time as a justice Minister in this place. It breaks my heart to think back to the conversations that I had with prisoners—the conversation I spoke to the Member for Rhondda about with one of her constituents, who assumed that he would be back in Cardiff Prison quite soon after his release, because the facilities to support him and to deal with his drug addiction simply weren't there and he had nowhere to live. We have to treat these people with more humanity, and we have to treat these people with more respect and we have to say to people, 'You have rights and the right to participate in shaping the community into which you will be released'. And I hope that this country, as we accrue additional powers and as this democracy matures, will mature into a democracy that treats the people of this country with far more respect than we've heard from some parts of this Chamber this afternoon. And let me say this: I will stand for election, as I already have—and many of the people making points in opposition, of course, have never won a mandate to this place, have never stood in their own name in a constituency and fought an election. [Interruption.] Let me say this: I have done so, I have been elected, I have had those conversations with my community and I will do so again. And I will stand up for the human rights of people when I do so, and that, I believe, is the duty of all of us.

I'm going to call the next speaker, Jenny Rathbone, but I think, before I do that, I would like some clarity from the previous speaker that he didn't intend to say, as I'm sure he didn't, that people who stand for election by whatever means and therefore become elected to this institution are less valuable than their colleagues. [Interruption.] I would just like for that to be explained, before I call the next speaker.

I'm making the point, acting Presiding Officer, that, when people talk to us about public opinion, I've tested public opinion in my constituency, and I won a mandate on the basis of it.

I think this is an important debate, and one that we are going to have to decide on when we legislate on the future franchise for Assembly and local government elections. So, this is not some airy-fairy matter; this is something that we are going to have to make decisions about.

Frankly, if prisoners had the right to vote, politicians might pay more attention to the disgraceful conditions in which many prisoners are still held. We heard from—. Yesterday's riots at Long Lartin exposed the fact that many prisoners still do not have a toilet in their cell and are having to slop out in the morning, which is so unpleasant for both the inmates and the officers who are looking after them. This is just disgraceful in the twenty-first century.

Across the UK, we spend billions of pounds on locking people up, and, in Wales, we have a higher proportion of prisoners than any other country in western Europe, so we need to be asking ourselves what is not working. Because our recidivism rates mean that, in many cases, we are simply having a revolving door and therefore we are sinking more billions into something that isn't working properly. We need to ensure that most of our prisoners are coming out convinced that they are going to live a better life and have learned from their mistakes. I pay credit to the excellent work of the prisons and the prisoners—the prison officers and other agencies who do achieve that, but far too many prisoners do not achieve that outcome.

I regard voting not just as a right, but a duty of all citizens, and that should include all prisoners. It was very interesting, talking to prisoners at Parc prison in Bridgend and at Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire, where all the women prisoners are themselves—they told us that, before going to prison, they believed all prisoners were bad people, but now they feel they were often just people who made bad decisions. I think it's particularly disappointing to hear from Caroline Jones, who has worked in the prison system and therefore knows how complex the situation is—every single person in prison will have a different story, and most of them have made bad decisions. Most of them haven't set out to commit a crime, they've just, on the spur of the moment, committed a crime—for which they need to be punished. But I think the complexity of the situation as well is illustrated by the play that's on at the Clink at the moment—called A Night in the Clink—which is attached to Cardiff prison. The work done by Sherman Theatre in collaboration with Papertrail is a really commendable piece of writing, of acting and a really powerful expression of just how difficult it is for somebody to reintegrate into society.

John Griffiths has already mentioned the venerable Lady Hale, that upholder of our democracy. In 2014, she said:

'Any restriction of fundamental rights has to be a proportionate means of pursuing a legitimate aim. Is it simply an additional punishment, a further mark of society's disapproval of the criminal offence? Or is it rather to encourage a sense of civic responsibility and respect for democratic institutions? If so, it could well be argued that this is more likely to be achieved by retaining the vote, as a badge of continuing citizenship, to encourage civic responsibility and reintegration in civil society'.

So, I think that view was well expressed by all the governors that we spoke to, because they understand the importance of ensuring that prisoners are focusing on the hopeful outcome. So, it is such a tragedy that penal policy is so dominated by the popular press, as expressed by some of the speakers today. The tragedy is particularly for children of prisoners, who are never considered when we send people to prison, and often they are no actual risk themselves to society. By enfranchising all those with sentences of less than four years we are excluding those guilty of the most serious crimes, and it's a pity that Caroline Jones didn't actually read the report, because it says clearly that less than half the prisoners serving from Wales are serving sentences of four years or more. So, in 2017, which is the last time those were available, 1,800 were serving less than four years, versus 1,600 serving sentences longer than four years.

We have to move with and—. We have to be the shaper of public opinion in this case, as we did with abolishing hanging, as we did with introducing the abortion Act, which most reasonable people now realise is absolutely what we need to be doing. So, my last point is to say that those who are already enfranchised to vote under the 1983 Act are not being allowed to exercise that responsibility. It isn't sufficient to say, 'Does anybody want to vote?'—

Can you wind up, please?

—and expect them to come forward, with all the other issues they have. Everybody needs to be registered to vote. That is the law, and it is not being upheld in our prisons, and it's something that I hope the Minister might speak about in terms of ensuring that the Prison Service and the electoral registration officers are working to ensure that every single person entering the prison, even if it's only for a week, is registered to vote as part of the process on entry.

Thanks to the committee chairman for bringing today's debate, and also thanks to all the people who took part, including the prisoners that we spoke to. Now, I'm not now a member of the committee, although I was at the outset of this inquiry. I did participate in the two prison visits and I was on the committee when we started to debate the contents of the report.

I think John Griffiths is right when he says that this is an emotive issue, and people's views are bound to differ, as has been demonstrated by this debate. To be fair to the Chair, he did allow us all to have our say on this when we began to discuss what would go into the report, but of course we were never all going to agree. Now, we may have political differences here as to whether or not there should be any extension of prisoner voting, but can I also point out that, even if we all agreed on the issue of extending it, which we don't, there would still be major logistical and practical problems in applying that extension? For instance, there is the problem that we have Welsh prisoners in prisons in Wales and also many Welsh prisoners in prisons in England, and we also have English prisoners in prison in Wales. This means that, if we have an election in Wales such as an Assembly election or local government elections, then some prisoners can vote—if this idea goes through, this extension, some prisoners will be able to vote and some will not, and there will be some difficulties in distinguishing between these different categories of prisoner. I'm not saying that—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, of course.

I just want to point out that, already, those with more than four-year sentences are already categorised separately by the Prison Service. So, this is something they already do.

Yes, and I'm not disagreeing with that remark that you made, Jenny, and I'm not saying the difficulties are insuperable. But certainly I believe the legislation will add to the burden of prison staff, who probably have enough to do as it is, and we did hear some evidence to that effect when we had the inquiry.

There is also the issue of what happens if we have a situation similar to 2017, when we had Welsh local elections rapidly followed by a general election. If that situation were to be replicated in future, you would have some prisoners who were eligible to vote in the locals. Then a few weeks later we might have a general election, which they might be more interested in than they were in the locals, and guess what? They don't have a vote. Somebody is then going to have to explain to a group of prisoners why they don't have a vote that they thought they had—good luck with that one.

Now, there is also a logistical problem of setting a cut-off point as to which prisoners can vote, so we have the compromise, which the report proposes, of prisoners having a vote who are serving sentences of four years or less. This is better, I think, than giving the vote to all prisoners, which I think would send out a message to society that the wider public would find difficult to comprehend. However, we were told by some people in authority in the prison service during our visits that it would actually be far more difficult to operate this extension of prisoner voting if there were a cut-off point, because again, it creates different categories of prisoner, some of whom can vote, others who cannot. We would have prisoners on the same wing, many convicted for very similar offences, but having being given marginally different sentences, some of whom can vote, and others who cannot. In a closed environment like a prison, this could lead to problems. In fact, far from increasing the morale of prisoners, giving the vote to some of them, but not all of them, could actually lead to arguments and a decrease in the general morale of a prison wing during an election time.

In my view, the most practical solution would not be to extend the prisoner vote at all, but to accept the situation as it currently stands. Hardly anyone in the wider electorate supports prisoner voting at all. Most believe that prisoners have forfeited their right to vote when they forfeited a much more important right, which was the right to their own liberty. Prisoners have already been adjudged to be incapable of conforming to civil society. This was the decision taken when they were sentenced to imprisonment. It makes no sense at all in the eyes of most ordinary members of the public to give them the right to vote. There are some caveats in terms of prisoners on remand who haven’t been convicted of any offence, and in terms of those on temporary licences, but these are all covered by the existing legislation. So, why the need to extend prisoner voting at all? This report is the prelude to another bad piece of legislation in the making, I am afraid, and another that shows how out of touch the Welsh Assembly is with the general public of Wales. Thank you.

In its response to the report, Welsh Government said, and I quote, 

'The Welsh Government believes that enabling at least some prisoners to vote will send very strong and positive messages to prisoners that they still have a stake in society and, in turn, that they have responsibilities towards society as a whole.'

Such a claim ignores the fact that fewer than one in 12 prisoners are actually in prison for a first offence. It’s incredibly difficult to get into a prison these days. For example, fewer than one in eight incarcerated for drug offences have no previous convictions or cautions, and astoundingly, a prisoner is much more likely to have at least 46 previous convictions or cautions than to be a first-time offender. All of this offending while still being able to vote, still having a stake in society, and in turn, responsibilities towards society as a whole.

Each time a criminal has been through the judicial system, probation services and the judge or magistrates will have given the offender all the signals they need that they have a chance to reform—strong signals much more direct than any message this place might send. All offenders, and repeat offenders even more so, are warned that if they continue to offend, they will be risking their liberties, their conjugal rights and their daily freedoms. Magistrates, probation officers and judges make it abundantly clear what an offender risks should he or she reoffend, and so surely we can take the act of reoffending by the criminal as his or her consent to lose those freedoms and liberties.

This report is simply about numbers, but it shouldn't be just about numbers—there are some very serious principles here. Rather than sending non-stop criminals a message that they will still have responsibilities towards society, it does the opposite. It says that despite repeated warnings from judges and probation officers that if you keep offending you will lose your civil liberties, you can actually continue to offend with less negative circumstances for your own civil liberties than has thus far been the case. It sends a message to law-abiding members of society that our political class are even more out of touch than they thought, because they want to allow those who cannot stick to the law to have a hand in creating the law.

Surely a criminal, while in prison serving their sentence, is not a fit person to have an influence in deciding the rules the law-abiding public have to live by. Many paedophiles convicted of possessing indecent images of children are not jailed, yet even when they are, like Jonathan McNeill, they get sentences shorter than four years. This man didn't need to have any signal sent to him about having a stake in society; he'd only retired from being a police officer six months before his arrest and 15-month prison sentence. But Labour and others in this Chamber obviously think that he and paedophiles like him should still have a stake in society. Well, he shouldn't have, and people should be ashamed that they want to chase their votes.

Just a week after this place sent a message to parents that they should feel bad about how they discipline their children, the same politicians are telling those who want to see pictures of children being abused that they should feel better about themselves. It's disgusting. If you're going to continue to change the electorate, perhaps you should test the public opinion about the proposed changes properly before agreeing them in this place. I have had no correspondence from the electorate asking for prisoners to be allowed to vote. I do, however, hear from voters concerned about the failing NHS, the failing education system and the failing social care system. No wonder Labour want to change the electorate and allow those who have little or no concern for how fairly society functions to be able to vote for them. Thank you.

I call on the Llywydd to speak on behalf of the Assembly Commission—Elin Jones.

Thank you. I'm grateful for the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Assembly Commission to this detailed and informative report from the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee. I want to outline why we're having this debate today. When the Commission and I were considering how to exercise the new powers provided under the Wales Act 2017 to make changes to the Assembly's electoral franchise, one of the issues that came to my attention early on was the rights of prisoners to vote.

The European Court of Human Rights has found in previous rulings that the United Kingdom is in breach of the European convention on human rights by banning prisoners generally from voting. As Llywydd, I feel it is my duty to ensure that the Assembly's electoral franchise is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Therefore, the voting rights of prisoners became one of the top issues to consider in the context of changing the Assembly's electoral franchise.

Members will be aware that the UK Government has made administrative arrangements that will allow a limited number of prisoners to vote. The Council of Europe has endorsed the UK Government's approach, but it’s not yet known whether these arrangements are adequate in the view of the European court. For the Assembly, the main requirement of the European court ruling is that considered decisions are made about the rights of prisoners to vote in elections to legislatures.

The Assembly Commission sought the views of the public on this issue in 2018 as part of our consultation on 'Creating a Parliament for Wales'. Our consultation highlighted the legal, ethical and practical complexities of giving prisoners the vote, and we therefore agreed that the matter needed to be considered in detail on a cross-party basis, in order to enable the Assembly as a legislature to give its views on this sensitive policy area before submitting any legislative proposals.

Therefore, in September 2018, I wrote to the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee and asked them to consider this issue further, and we can see the work that has been delivered and the report before us today. The Assembly Commission considered the committee's report and recommendations carefully and the main recommendation in the committee’s report was that the Welsh Government and the Assembly Commission should legislate to give the vote to prisoners serving sentences of less than four years.

I’m aware that the Counsel General has recently written to the committee outlining the Welsh Government's commitment to the principle of allowing prisoners the right to vote in every devolved election in Wales—

Will the Llywydd give way?

Yes.

You say that you felt a duty to push for prisoners to have the right to vote, but doesn't that actually understate it? Aren't you under a legal obligation to do so, speaking for the Commission, in the same way Jeremy Miles would for the Welsh Government? As public bodies, the law requires you to have regard to the judgments of the ECHR.

Yes, I agree, and I thought that that's what I'd said. If I was not clear in what I said, then certainly conforming to the convention is something that there is a duty on the National Assembly to ensure—that it does conform to the European convention on human rights, and that's driven all of this work thus far.

I'll return, therefore, to the committee recommendation. The Commission has considered whether the Senedd and elections Bill, which is currently being considered by the Assembly, would be a suitable legislative vehicle for any proposals by the Welsh Government, and has come to the conclusion that the Bill would not be a suitable legislative vehicle, in our view at present. The Commission strongly agrees with the view of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee that granting voting rights to prisoners would amount to a significant change to the electoral franchise and any provisions to affect such a change should be included in a Bill when it’s introduced, rather than inserted through amendments. Although the inquiry into prisoners' voting rights undertaken by the committee has considered this policy issue in detail, the Commission agrees with the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee that this cannot be the equivalent of scrutiny of a Bill at Stage 1. As such, the Commission does not consider that amendments should be tabled to the Senedd and elections Bill to address this issue.

It’s also worthwhile clarifying the remit of the Assembly Commission in relation to electoral matters. The Assembly, of course, has given the Commission a mandate to introduce legislation to lower the voting age for Assembly elections. However, the Welsh Government retains responsibility for all devolved elections in Wales and a vote for prisoners is also a more complex issue than giving the right to 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, and for these reasons we believe that the development of any legislative proposals in relation to prisoners' voting rights for Assembly elections, and the responsibility for responding to most of the committee's recommendations, is a matter for the Welsh Ministers.

To close, therefore, I’d like to thank the committee for undertaking this detailed inquiry. Without a doubt, it’s a very important contribution on this fundamental question, which relates to constitutional issues and human rights issues that the Assembly and the Welsh Government will address in due course.

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

Thank you, acting Presiding Officer. I also would like to add my thanks to the Chair and to the committee for their detailed examination of the many issues around the emotive and complex subject of voting rights for prisoners. Both the inquiry and the report were thorough and objective. The analysis and recommendations have certainly helped to inform our policy conclusions, which are set out in my already-published written response to the recommendations. We accept, or accept in principle, all the committee's recommendations that were addressed to the Welsh Government. Our reasoning is set out in my response, so I will not go through those again.

As highlighted in the committee's report, there are significant legal and administrative issues to tackle in implementing prisoner voting. The Welsh Government will need to engage in work with the UK Government and in particular with Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service to deliver prisoner voting in a timely, coherent and effective manner. My officials have already started liaising with contacts across a range of UK Government institutions.

But that is only part of the preparation and engagement needed. The right to vote is a precious and powerful tool. Voters need to be informed about what they are voting for and who wants to represent them. Candidates and political parties need to be able to reach out to voters and communicate their policies to them. If extending the vote to prisoners and young people in custody is going to be meaningful, we also need to do a lot of work on the softer issues identified in the committee's report, such as voter awareness and education, accessibility to information and media and practical support to help prisoners and young people in custody to register their vote. 

I have always made clear that the Welsh Government believes strongly in the principle that at least some prisoners should be enfranchised in devolved Welsh elections. We will work to introduce legislation in this Assembly to enable prisoners and young people in custody from Wales who are serving a custodial sentence of less than four years to vote in local government elections. Our aim is that eligible prisoners and young people in custody will be able to vote at the next ordinary local government elections during 2022. 

However, sadly, we do not believe it will be possible to resolve all the issues mentioned in the committee report in time to include provision for Assembly elections in the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Bill currently being considered by Assembly Members. For all the reasons that the Llywydd just set out, and with which I entirely concur, we need to do a better exercise in figuring out what we need to do and think about that more particularly. I'll revert to that point a little later in my speech. 

So, this will be a very small group of new electors, but they have particular circumstances that cut across many of the long-established arrangements for registering to vote and casting votes. There simply isn't enough time to work through and test with the UK Government, the prison service and electoral registration officers all the new legal and administrative requirements that would need to be in place for an election that was held in 2021, as the Llywydd just pointed out. Bear in mind that, for any new category of voter to be able to vote at the Assembly election in May 2021, all the primary legislation, the secondary legislation and the guidance would need to be in place by July 2020, when the canvass starts to draw up the register that will apply at those elections.

We will also need to work closely with the likes of the Electoral Commission, prison governors and officers, political parties, education providers, media organisations and prisoners themselves to develop clear, accurate and practical guidance and procedures to inform and support prisoners about how to register and cast their vote. Accordingly, the Welsh Government will not table amendments to the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Bill; we will seek an appropriate legislative vehicle to introduce provision at the earliest opportunity to enable prisoners and young people in custody from Wales to vote in Assembly elections. The first general Assembly election at which prisoners and young people in custody would be able to vote, therefore, would be those in 2026. 

The number who gain the right to vote by these changes will be small—about 2,000 at the most—but this is an important step forward, both in practice and in principle. We need to make sure that this is not merely a gesture that has no practical effect beyond what's written on the statute book. That means we, and all the other agencies involved, will need to invest time and effort to make sure the necessary infrastructure is in place, is tested and is robust. I'm very happy to respond to John's request to keep the committee informed as to our progress with regard to each of the recommendations and how we implement them in practical detail, and I'll make sure that officials keep the committee informed as those matters progress.

We want this new group of voters to be able to exercise their rights and to do so in the knowledge that they are citizens, have a stake in society and have obligations to society too. I firmly believe that the return on such investment will be very worth while indeed. Diolch.

I now call on John Griffiths, as Chair of the committee, to reply to the debate.

Diolch yn fawr. Well, it's been an interesting debate with mixed views. There were, of course, mixed views on the committee, reflected in the report, but the majority support the recommendations of the committee and the report itself. I do believe that there are a number of practical issues that have to be addressed, as has been outlined by Members, but those are addressed by the report and the recommendations.

We did, of course, hear from prison staff that although there was recognition of those difficulties—some of the bureaucracy and system problems that might be involved—they were by no means insurmountable. Indeed, the prison governor and the staff were very supportive of the direction of travel that the report recommends, and we were very grateful for that degree of understanding.

Yes, there will have to be, as we recommend, a memorandum of understanding, which the Welsh Government and the Electoral Commission can pursue with the UK Government and the prison service. That will address issues around making sure prisoners are registered to vote, if they're eligible; that they're supported to take part; that there is access to meet with prisoners for political parties and campaigning purposes; and that there is an election co-ordinator in each prison with Welsh prisoners. All of those matters are very practical issues, Dirprwy Lywydd, and we recognise them and address them in our report in an equally practical way. They are not insurmountable, and, as I say, that was very much accepted by those who will be tasked with conducting the arrangements inside the prison.

There will have to be information provided to prisoners and an addressing of the lack of access to Welsh media in terms of prisons in England, which we heard very effectively from prisoners in Eastwood Park. So, yes, there are quite a lot of practical issues, but none of them insurmountable. Indeed, I think there was a clear sense of the necessary will within prisons and necessary partners to make sure that those difficulties are surmounted.

It has been very interesting and worthwhile work, and I think the committee did enjoy the work, knowing that it's something of practical import—it's something that we were asked to do. It's something that recognises the responsibilities of this institution in terms of the European convention on human rights, that there was a clear requirement for these matters to be addressed from that very important international body, and indeed, of course, that ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that a blanket ban is not defensible in terms of their requirements and our responsibilities. That has been recognised by the UK Government with the limited changes they've made, which I referred to earlier, and we also have to come to a view here as to how we deal with those requirements. I'm very pleased that the report has been able, I think, to do that effectively—that has been accepted by Welsh Government. I appreciate what the Llywydd said in terms of the work of the committee and the responsibility that we accepted, that we have undertaken and, I hope, properly discharged.

A lot of what we heard in terms of the debate, of course, Dirprwy Lywydd, wasn't about the more practical issues, but really address the wider matters of principle. I think that's absolutely fine; there are broad issues of principle. We recognise that in the report. I'd agree with some of the Members that spoke, such as Leanne Wood, Jenny Rathbone and Alun Davies, and I thank Alun Davies for the work that he did as Minister in taking these matters forward, and putting us in a position where we can make the progress that I hope we will make in due course.

I very much understand the description that those Members gave of the criminal justice system that we have. I think it is broken; I don't think there's any doubt about that. It's grossly overcrowded, which makes it very, very difficult to take forward proper training, proper rehabilitation. That really does matter, doesn't it? And it was recognised, indeed, by Rory Stewart, one of the recent Ministers at a UK level with responsibility. He actually, I think quite dramatically and very impressively, said that if he couldn't turn it around as a system within a defined period of time, then he would step down from that position. It was quite a dramatic way of addressing his responsibilities. Other matters intervened, as we all know, in a fairly dramatic way as well, but I think that was an impressive way of a Minister recognising responsibilities, recognising the current state of the criminal justice system and prison system, and wanting to do something effective about it.

So, there are grave problems, and what they actually do is result in more crime and more victims of crime, because if people aren't properly rehabilitated when they are released, as nearly all prisoners are, then obviously they are more likely to re-offend and damage our communities, themselves and their families further. 

Would the Chair give way? 

I will give way. 

He must have been taken, as I was, by the evidence given by the Prison Reform Trust when they said, 'Let's not forget that many of the people in prison come from those communities, disproportionately from black and ethnic minority communities, disproportionately from disadvantaged communities as well.' They're not a separate community; they are part of our community. And that's right, because if we fail to adequately put rehabilitation in place—and part of this debate is around that as well—then, actually, what we're saying is we are casting those people out, and heaven help us then for the implications of that when they are released back into our community, unless we treat them as citizens. 

I absolutely completely agree with that. As I said, what we're talking about I think is doing the right thing in terms of principle, but also doing the right thing in terms of the practical effect. And I'm not saying that giving prisoners the vote is going to greatly boost rehabilitation and reintegration, but I do believe it's an important signal, and I do believe that when we were taking evidence in prisons from prisoners and staff, and outside prison in our committee hearings, there was a recognition and a general support for that position. It might seem like quite a small thing in terms of overall rehabilitation, but actually it is significant. And that's certainly the way I view it, and I'm very pleased that the majority of the committee viewed it the same way.

The motion—. Wait a minute. The proposal is to note the committee's report. Does any Member object? The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36. 

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.