On 23 September 2025, the Second Section of the European Court of Human Rights handed down judgment in Hora v United Kingdom (App. No. 1048/20).
The applicant was a prisoner at the time of the 2019 general election, imprisoned for a second conviction for rape. In accordance with section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, as a person serving a sentence of imprisonment imposed by the criminal courts the applicant was not permitted to vote in that election. He complained to the ECtHR of a violation of his right to vote contrary to Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR, relying on the Grand Chamber’s well-known ruling in Hirst v UK (No2) (2006) 42 EHRR 41.
Despite the finding in Hirst that the ban on prisoner voting was a violation of A3P1, and the various subsequent judgments of the ECtHR applying Hirst to find the UK in breach, the UK has not amended the legislation (as it applies in England and Wales) in the subsequent 20 years. Parliamentary votes have consistently opposed extending the franchise to prisoners. Instead, in 2017, the Government announced administrative changes which altered policy and clarified the ban’s non-application to certain limited categories of those still serving their sentences, but not incarcerated at the point of an election. In 2018, the Council of Ministers accepted those administrative changes as falling with the UK’s wide margin of appreciation and constituting an appropriate response to Hirst, such that it could close its monitoring of the prisoner voting line of cases.
Hora is the first case brought before the ECtHR to test whether the post-2018 position is compatible with A3P1. The ECtHR unanimously found no violation of A3P1 in the applicant’s case, marking the first decision in favour of the UK in connection with prisoner voting since Hirst.
The judgment is significant for: the reiteration of the wide margin of appreciation in connection with the disenfranchisement of prisoners; the weight given to the view of the Council of Ministers that the UK’s administrative changes were appropriate to address the finding in Hirst; and the reversion to the consideration of the compatibility of the 1983 Act ban in the specific context of the applicant’s case, rather than in abstracto, as had been the emphasis in Hirst. The ECtHR accordingly ruled that there had been no violation in the applicant’s case; having regard to his very serious offending, the disenfranchisement of him in domestic law was a proportionate interference with his A3P1 rights.
The judgment is available here.
Christopher Knight acted for the United Kingdom, led by Sir James Eadie KC, instructed by the FCDO.
