EU & Human Rights

Hirst v the United Kingdom No. 2 - 74025/01

[2009] ECHR 2260European Court of Human Rights2009

Cite this case in OSCOLA →All EU & Human Rights cases →

Get the AI brief for this case

Generate a structured brief — facts, issues, held, reasoning, and significance — for this case in seconds. Or browse the verbatim judgment via the source links below.

Quick orient — first passages from judgment

The Committee of Ministers, under the terms of Article 46, paragraph 2, of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which provides that the Committee supervises the execution of final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the Convention” and “the Court”);

Recalling that, in the present judgment, the Court found that the general, automatic and indiscriminate restriction on the right of convicted prisoners in custody to vote, fell outside any acceptable margin of appreciation and was incompatible with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention;

Recalling that the Court, while acknowledging that the rights bestowed by Article 3 of Protocol 1 are not absolute, expressly noted that in the present case the blanket restriction applied automatically to all prisoners, irrespective of the length of their sentence, the nature or gravity of their offence and their individual circumstances;

Recalling further that the Court found “no evidence that Parliament has ever sought to weigh the competing interests or to assess the proportionality of a blanket ban on the right of a convicted prisoner to vote”;

Noting that the blanket restriction imposed by Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 remains in full force and effect;

Auto-extracted from BAILII. Full structured brief in progress — the source links below give you the verbatim judgment in the meantime.

Full judgment transcript

BAILII · Verbatim mirror

Recalling that the United Kingdom authorities, in a revised Action Plan submitted in December 2006, committed to undertaking a two-stage consultation process to determine the measures necessary to implement the judgment of the Court, with a view to introducing the necessary draft legislation before Parliament in May 2008;

Noting that the United Kingdom authorities have provided detailed information as regards the consultation process, and that they are committed to continuing to do so;

Noting however that the second consultation stage ended on 29 September 2009, and the United Kingdom authorities are now undertaking a detailed analysis of the responses thereto, in order to determine how best to implement a system of prisoner enfranchisement based on the length of custodial sentence handed down to prisoners,

EXPRESSES SERIOUS CONCERN that the substantial delay in implementing the judgment has given rise to a significant risk that the next United Kingdom general election, which must take place by June 2010, will be performed in a way that fails to comply with the Convention;

URGES the respondent state, following the end of the second stage consultation period, to rapidly adopt the measures necessary to implement the judgment of the Court;

DECIDES to resume consideration of this case at their 1078th meeting (March 2010) (DH), in the light of further information to be provided by the authorities on general measures.

1 Adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 3 December 2009 at the 1072nd meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies.

Read the full judgment elsewhere

Multiple official and mirror sources — pick whichever loads cleanly on your network.

More EU & Human Rights cases

ABDULLAH KILIC v. TURKIYE - 43979/17 (Judgment : Preliminary objection joined to merits and dismissed : Second Section) French Text

[2023] ECHR 92

RADOI AND OTHERS v. ROMANIA - 31590/15 (Judgment : Article 3 - Prohibition of torture : Fourth Section Committee)

[2023] ECHR 11

DUGAN v. TURKIYE - 84543/17 (Judgment : Art 5 § 1 - Deprivation of liberty - Unjustified short-term detention at a police station of applicant, a transgender person, for disrupting traffic : Second Section)

[2023] ECHR 113

MACATE v LITHUANIA - 61435/19 (Judgment : Freedom of expression - Temporary suspension of children's fairy tale book depicting same-sex relationships and its subsequent labelling as harmful to children under the age of 14 : Grand Chamber)

[2023] ECHR 69

KRYUCHKOV AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA - 65075/19 (Judgment : Article 5 - Right to liberty and security : Third Section Committee)

[2023] ECHR 33

B.Y. v. GREECE - 60990/14 (Judgment : No Article 3 - Prohibition of torture : Applicant who has not provided prima facie evidence in support of his version of the facts of his deprivation of liberty and his surrender to the Turkish authorities by Greek police officers who ill-treated him : First Section) French Text

[2023] ECHR 81

Common Room

Discussion

0 comments · About the Common Room →

No comments yet — start the discussion.

Voted-best comments help future students and feed Caselaw's AI study tools.

This case is reproduced verbatim from the public judgment published by The National Archives under the UK Government's Open Government Licence v3.0. If you appear in this case and believe it should not be published — for example because your conviction was quashed on appeal, you have statutory anonymity, or for other privacy reasons — request removal here.