Prisoners to get the right to vote

Prisoners are to get the right to vote as the government is poised to throw in the towel in a long-running legal tussle with the European court of human rights, it emerged today.

It is understood that the coalition is to confirm that it is ready to change the law to remove the voting ban on more than 70,000 inmates of British jails.

The move comes after government lawyers advised that failure to comply with a 2004 ECHR ruling could cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds in litigation costs and compensation.

David Cameron was said to be "exasperated and furious" at having to accept that there was no way of keeping the UK's 140-year-old blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting.

There was no official confirmation of the decision to drop the ban, but a representative of the government is expected to signal the move in a statement to the court of appeal tomorrow.

No decision is thought to have been taken on exactly how the change will be implemented and which inmates are to be given the right to vote.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the ban could be retained for murderers and others serving life sentences and that judges may be given responsibility for deciding which criminals should be allowed to vote when they are sentenced.

The paper quoted an unnamed senior government source as saying: "This is the last thing we wanted to do but we have looked at this from every conceivable angle and had lawyers poring over the issue.

"But there is no way out and if we continued to delay then it could start costing the taxpayers hundreds of millions in litigation."

Sentenced prisoners were originally denied the right to take part in ballots under the Forfeiture Act 1870, and the ban was retained in the Representation of the People Act 1983. Prisoners on remand awaiting trial, fine defaulters and people jailed for contempt of court can vote.

Following a legal challenge from prisoner John Hirst, the ECHR ruled in 2004 that the blanket ban was discriminatory and breached the European convention on human rights. However the Strasbourg-based court said that each country can decide which offences should carry restrictions to voting rights.

The former Labour administration kicked the issue into the long grass with a series of consultations. But the Council of Europe warned earlier this year that the UK government's failure to comply with the ECHR ruling risked sparking many more compensation claims.

It urged Britain to lift its ban before the May general election to avoid the danger that the poll might not comply with the convention.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, welcomed the move. "A historic decision to enfranchise serving prisoners would mark the end of the archaic punishment of civic death dating back to the Forfeiture Act of 1870," she said.

"In a modern prison system you would expect prisoners to have rights and responsibilities and politicians to take an active interest in their constituency prisons.

"People are sent to prison to lose their liberty not their identity."