UK can decide which prisoners vote, says European Court

The European Court of Human Rights has said individual governments can decide how to implement a ban on convicted prisoners voting.

The judgement means the UK will be able to decide for itself how to resolve the long-standing row over votes for prisoners.

But the court says the UK only has six months to outline its proposed reforms.

In a landmark judgment the Court found that an Italian prisoner's rights had not been breached.

In a summary of its judgement, the court said it "accepted the [UK] government's argument that each State has a wide discretion as to how it regulates the ban, both as regards the types of offence that should result in the loss of the vote and as to whether disenfranchisement should be ordered by a judge in an individual case or should result from general application of a law."

The judgement comes seven years after the court first ordered the UK to rethink its absolute ban on convicted prisoners voting.