Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:26 pm on 8 April 2020.
Thank you very much. I hear the hostility there is from the opposition, but I just want to remind us all that when we did a cross-party inquiry into prisoners voting, it was notable not just for the support it attracted from prisoners, but also from prison governors, including one of the most senior governors in this country. So it's always possible to whip up hostility to prisoners voting. That is, unfortunately, one of the hallmarks of our criminal justice system, that it is so bedogged by the attitudes and prejudices of many of the newspapers in this country, which is why it's so difficult to have a proper debate on this subject. But I think it would be a tragedy if we missed this opportunity to introduce legislation that I think we can demonstrate will actually improve the civic engagement of marginalised people, many of whom end up in the prison system on relatively minor offences—and we are talking about a very limited franchise—and this would enable us to pay much more attention to improving our criminal justice system, on which we spend billions of pounds, and which is not effective at addressing recidivism.