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| No European Court damages for prisoners denied vote | No European Court damages for prisoners denied vote |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK has again breached prisoners' rights by failing to give them the vote. | The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK has again breached prisoners' rights by failing to give them the vote. |
| But it refused to award damages to the 10 inmates bringing the action, saying the ruling in their favour was enough. | |
| The group, who are prisoners in Scottish jails, argued the UK's ban on them voting in the 2009 European elections breached their human rights. | |
| The UK has already been told it must allow some prisoners to vote. | The UK has already been told it must allow some prisoners to vote. |
| Both the previous Labour government and current coalition have failed to legislate to change the law - although Parliamentarians have been considering various proposals from ministers to end the long-running row with the Strasbourg court. | |
| In the latest case, the court - which oversees human rights law that the UK signed up to - had been asked to award damages to the inmates because of the UK's repeated failure over almost a decade to end the blanket ban on voting. | |
| But although the court said the inmates, who include sex offenders, had suffered a breach of their rights, they were not entitled to any compensation. | |
| Judges said that in the vast majority of cases relating to prisoners' votes they had had "expressly declined" to order governments to make payments to convicted criminals. | |
| "As in those cases, in the present case the court concludes that the finding of a violation constitutes sufficient just satisfaction for any non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicants," said the latest ruling. | |
| They also refused to order the British government to pay the inmates' legal costs. |