PM warned on votes for prisoners

Europe's human rights watchdog has hit back in the continuing war of words with London over voting rights for prisoners.

Prime Minister David Cameron is defying a Strasbourg court ruling that the UK's blanket ban on all prisoners voting while in jail is a breach of human rights.

But a draft Bill before Parliament - announced as a deadline expired for action to change the law - includes the option of keeping domestic rules unchanged.

Now the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, which monitors whether countries are implementing Human Rights Court judgments, has issued a reminder that the status quo will not do.

The move is bound to reinforce rumblings over whether the UK should leave the Council of Europe's 47-nation club - nothing to do with the EU - if sovereign control over human rights is ceded to Strasbourg.

The Committee of Ministers - effectively the ambassadors of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe - used its latest quarterly meeting to pass judgment on the Government's decision to set up a joint committee of both Houses to look at the issue.

On the agenda are three options - changing the rules to allow those sentenced to less than four years to vote; changing the rules to allow only those serving six months or less to vote; and maintaining a blanket ban on prisoner voting.

The odds are that a majority of MPs would choose the third option - triggering the latest warning from Strasbourg: "The third option aimed at retaining the blanket restriction criticised by the European Court cannot be considered compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights," said the Committee of Ministers.

But no showdown seems imminent: the Committee said it would look at the case again "at the latest" in September next year.

Meanwhile, the Committee said it noted "with great interest" that the UK authorities had introduced legislative proposals to Parliament on November 22 with a range of options for amending domestic electoral law on prisoner voting.