No5 Barrister in Application to the European Court of Human Rights Over the Government’s Refusal to Permit Prisoners to Vote

No5 barrister David Lock has been instructed by leading Human Rights law firm, Leigh Day and Co, to petition the European Court of Human Rights in a damages claim for a prisoner who has been unlawfully denied the right to vote in the forthcoming general election on 6th May 2010. The government was told by the European Court of Human Rights as long as 2005 that a sentence of imprisonment did not make it lawful to take the vote away from prisoners. Despite the long time since that judgment the government has failed to bring in a new law, thus depriving about 80,000 prisoners of the right to vote in breach of their rights under the European Convention of Human Rights.