Should prisoners have the right to vote? It’s a question that came into sharp focus this week when I visited the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as part of the cross-party Justice Select Committee to meet with judges and officials. Other MPs and peers included Labour’s Harriet Harman and Baroness Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. My view is ‘No’. If you commit a crime serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence I believe you should forfeit that privilege for the duration of your jail term. Disappointingly, the ECHR disagrees. Some ten years ago, a convicted killer called John Hirst successfully argued that it was wrong to deny him the vote. His case led to an ECHR ruling that a blanket-ban was unlawful - and that the UK must change its law. I think that decision was wrong. And this week it led me, and other MPs, to have what I think is referred to in polite conversation as a ‘robust exchange of views’ with the ECHR. As I made clear, I believe this is the kind of matter that should be decided by our country’s own democratically elected and sovereign Parliament – not by an extra-territorial judicial body. The ECHR is of course not an EU institution. It was set up in the aftermath of the Second World War, and British lawyers helped frame many of its provisions. And for many years it stuck to the important job of enforcing common sense rights such as the prohibition against slavery and torture. But the Hirst judgment marked worrying judicial overreach – a willingness to stray beyond what should be a limited sphere of competence. And so I stressed in Strasbourg that if the UK is to remain in the Convention (something which on balance I support by the way) it is essential that the Court does not intrude into matters which ought properly to be left to our democratically-elected Parliament. And it was in that Parliament that this week I met with the Woodland Trust to discuss measures to safeguard our woodland (including the 63 ancient trees we have in Cheltenham). I also stepped up my campaign to protect victims of stalking, at an event in Westminster Hall attended by victims, academics, campaigners and the police, who gave tremendous support for the proposal to extend the maximum sentence for stalkers. Stalkers wreck lives. And those whose actions deserve a prison sentence should not in all conscience be rewarded with the vote. ECHR take note.