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Originally Posted by angus58

At last the voice of reason and commonsense prevails. High Court Judge Mr Justice Langstaff has thrown out the claims of 588 prisoners seeking to cash in on the MPs' ban on their voting, and they've been ordered to pay £76 each towards the costs (equivalent of two weeks' prison wages). No greedy lawyers wish to represent them since they have all been denied legal aid.

The Judge quite rightly stated that European Judgments cannot be allowed to trump British Laws passed at Westminster. In fact there is no legal requirement whatsoever for Britain to abide by European Judgments.

On this issue I am positive Cameron's government will get massive support from the public who will be amazed and delighted that we still have some Judges with commonsense. This will also be a justified and well deserved kick in the teeth for the usual liberal bigots who seem to have lost sight of the difference between basic human rights and privileges. It will no doubt also deter the opportunistic prisoners and greedy lawyers from attempting to launch compensation claims in future.

Good decision by the Judge on this one, however there are still over Two and a half thousand cases pending in Strasbourg and another 800 between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Should be amusing to see what the government does if either the Scottish or N Irish courts decide contrary to this one.

Incidentally £76 is about 8 weeks wages not two. So some of them wont be enjoying chocolate or smokes for a while.

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Latest Update on this:

The Government has lost its final appeal against a human rights ruling requiring Britain to give prisoners the vote.

Prime Minister David Cameron - who said the thought of granting the vote to criminals made him physically ill - now has six months to produce "legislative proposals" ending the current blanket ban on inmates voting in national and European elections.

The ultimatum was delivered by a five-judge panel of the European Court of Human Rights, which last November awarded two UK prisoners 5,000 euro (£4,350) in costs and expenses for their loss of voting rights, which was ruled a breach of their human rights.

On Monday the Court dismissed a request for an appeal hearing and decreed the original verdict final.

A statement issued by the Court said: "The Court now gives the UK Government six months from 11 April 2011 to introduce legislative proposals to bring the disputed law in line with the (European Human Rights) Convention.

"The Government is further required to enact the relevant legislation within any time frame decided by the Committee of Ministers, the executive arm of the Council of Europe, which supervises the execution of the Court's judgments".

More than five years ago the same court delivered a similar verdict in a separate case brought by a prisoner, but the then Labour government left the blanket ban in place.

Last November's second ruling came in a case brought by prisoners named as Robert Greens and MT, both serving time at Peterhead prison.

By then Mr Cameron's coalition government had announced that it reluctantly accepted there was a legal obligation to offer voting rights to at least some prisoners, and scrap the total ban

Should be interesting.