I can't say I'm surprised that the vote yesterday was in favour of not following the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights of allowing prisoners the right to vote. Obviously I'm disappointed by this vote but what disappointed me more was that only 24 people voted against this proposal and the turnout was only 40%. There was a free vote on this matter so it's not as if MPs had to abstain because of party policy and they had been whipped. As far as I can tell 43 of the 57 Lib Dems didn't vote and FOUR even voted for this illiberal bill.
I don't know the reason for this low turnout but surely this could be improved. We elect our MPs to represent us in the House of Commons I don't feel satisfied with such a low turn out. I know MPs are busy but surely their primary function should be to be present at votes in the House of Commons and ensure that each constituency has it's vote counted. I know it's not that much of a big deal but this is a vote that interested me and I was really annoyed when I read the figures.
I would really like to know the rationalle of the 233 MPs who voted to ignore the ECHR and how they think this will play out in the long run.
No comments:
Post a Comment