24/07/2014 Scotland 2014

If the right to vote is a fundamental human right why can't

The Supreme Court has ruled today that prisoners will not have

the right to vote in September's referendum.

Two convicted murderers had argued that they should be allowed to

participate because the consequences of a yes vote would

But tonight Scotland remains one of very few European countries that

What are the odds of a yes vote anyway?

We take a look at the academic research that shows that bookies are

better at predicting the outcome of elections than opinion polls.

And it's an emotional night in Glasgow as

Scottish Swimmers Hannah Miley and Ross Murdoch take gold in the pool.

In France, Germany, Spain and Italy in fact in 24 of the 28 countries

in the EU sentenced prisoners DO have the right to vote.

They can also exercise their franchise in Iraq, South

Two men who are serving life sentences for murder claimed

the ban on taking part in September's poll infringes their

But today they lost their final appeal.

this decision that affects around six 500 convicted prisoners in

Scotland. They are disbarred from voting. The Scottish independence

referendum franchise act states that...

The convicted murderers challenge that in Scottish courts but their

arguments were rejected twice. They argued the referendum could

fundamentally change their lives and it was their human rights to be able

to vote. We are grateful to you both for dealing with this matter, with

all its complexities, in such an efficient and clear manner. I would

like you to remain here while we leave the court and consider how we

proceed further. Hopefully, it will not take too long. The decision was

to reject the appeal. That is an welcomed by the Tories. I think it

is the correct decision. Your liberty and freedom is a fundamental

right as his right to vote. As you commit a crime, you forfeit those

rights. There was an implication that if they had decided the other

week, that would've had a knock-on effect for a potential referendum on

European membership? Yes, we were talking about that impacting on any

future referendum and more immediately, the one which is due to

come in two years time, should there be another Conservative government.

Britain is only one of three EU countries where prisoners cannot

port, like Hungary and Bulgaria. That is disquiet amongst senior

members of the war world. We should be in gauging with these people. We

are civil society and we put them in jail in the first place. We want

them to come out and engage with us afterwards. We should spend money on

rehabilitation. It is about teaching them they are responsible members of

society. Giving them the vote is saying that to them, this is one of

our civic rights. Scottish ministers welcomed the decision of the court

in which they confirmed a referendum law is compatible with European

rights legislation. In our Edinburgh studio is

the human rights advocate - John Scott - representing

the Howard League Scotland. And the SNP MSP Sandra White -

who sits on the Justice Committee. Scotland is now in a very small club

of countries which do not allow prisoners the vote, including places

like Russia, why do we want to be in that club? It was forced on the

Scottish Parliament by other poetical parties. We do not allow

convicted prisoners, romance prisoners do have the vote. It makes

us out of sync with 24 EU countries. Albania, Turkey and Azerbaijan alo

prisoners to vote but Scotland in the UK will not. We support the law

which does not allow convicted criminals to vote, I do not see

anything wrong with that. That is not the legal position. Quite often

the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against this blanket ban

so it is not the law. The Supreme Court upheld the appeal and they

said it does not contain European Convention on Human Rights. So we do

not convene -- go against European Convention on Human Rights in the

Referendum Bill. Are we contravening European law? I do not think we are,

as far as the referendum is concerned. I did not expect the

legal argument to succeed. The right thing to do was to give at least

some convicted prisoners -- prisoners vote. There is a

fundamental human rights to be allowed to vote in general

elections. That is where, as you said, the UK has been found wanting

by the European Court of Human Rights. That situation will have to

be remedied. It is a technical argument to say that a referendum is

different. At some point in the future, the decision of the court

might be different. The arguments for retaining a blanket ban simply

unsupportable. What are the arguments for allowing prisoners are

vote? Firstly, the ban does not operate as a punishment on

prisoners. Very many prisoners would not have voted when they were on the

outside. Many are not registered to vote. They do not recognise it as a

punishment. What it should be used as, is to try and encourage a sense

of civic responsibility on the part of small, poor and alienating of

society. We should also tell them it is their duty to vote, rather than a

right. That would be a good thing for democracy in a civic society,

would it not? In a studio you are fined if you do not vote. That is an

argument for another day. -- in Australia. He said civic society put

these people in prison, that is not correct. Their put them in prison.

Not romance prisoners of course. The government has a duty to the people

of that country. The people in this country do not want to see convicted

prisoners having a vote. I have spoken to people in the street and I

am sure you have, people have said that. Do you have any sympathy with

the argument that the result of the referendum is for life, not like a

general election? Absolutely, if people vote yes, which we will

certainly do. I am in favour of restorative justice. On the Justice

committee we have pushed through legislation regarding that but a

convicted criminal has given up the right to vote. We should be speaking

to prisoners in the prisons, encouraging them to take part in

society, restorative justice. Do you think you think it will be long

before convicted prisoners are voting in Holyrood or general

elections? It will not be long. Some convicted prisoners will have to be

given the vote. Although we have lost the vote at the Scottish

Parliament, we have won the argument. The arguments put forward

seeing convicted prisoners have forfeited their right to vote, that

runs up against the difficulty of the imposition of custodial

sentences. Many prisoners are in the short-term sentences, despite the

good efforts of the SNP Government and they will be released within

days of the referendum within days of a general election. They are in

for offences which were trivial but repeated. There are people who are

at liberty and are committed more serious offences who are not

affected so it is completely arbitrarily. Scotland's prisons far

to many people and therefore we remove the vote from far too many

people. Now, it's been an action packed

first day at the Commonwealth Games. Jonathan Sutherland is outside

Tollcross International Swimming Welcome to the Tollcross

International Swimming Centre. It is tranquil now behind me. Not so

tranquil one arrow go. The eyes of this nation were very much on this

place. Michael Jamieson, the poster boy of team Scotland, was going in

the 200 metres breaststroke will stop he would be upstaged by a new

poster boy. Look at that, the world record line, Ross Murdoch is going

to take the gold for Scotland. Silver to Scotland's, and it is

Michael Jamieson. Bronze goes to England. An utterly brilliant when.

It is called to Scotland, but it is not the person we thought. The gold

has gone to Ross Murdoch. Look at that, he just realises what he has

done. The big shock therefore a Ross Murdoch. What an amazing swim,

eclipsing Michael Jamieson into second place. Fantastic for Team

Scotland. Hugh MacDonald joins me now. All eyes of the nation were

very much on Michael Jamieson. How big a blow wasn't for him not to win

gold? Absolutely devastating. The silver medal will be no consolation.

You just have to look at the face of Michael Jamieson. When he came

through and talked in a dignified manner to the press, this is a

personality who is devastated. People will still say, you have a

silver medal. That does not count for sports people. That is for

people like you and I, who do not have that inbred desire to win. For

sports people it is all or nothing. This is a person who has trained to

a level where years made himself ill. He has come up short. He said,

I did not come here to come second. You were here all evening. What was

the atmosphere like? The atmosphere was extraordinary. We had Hannah

Miley earlier on, a fantastic victory for Hamas. There was

attention in here because there were three Scots racing together. The

Australian went ahead. Then it became clear that Michael Jamieson

is going to win, but then we had Murdoch coming through. Stay there,

we will come back to you, but it has been a very good day for team

Scotland. As Hugh MacDonald said, there was another big success for

team Scotland right here in the swimming pool. The crowd is on their

feet. No Scottish person has ever won a Gold medal in the swimming

pool in Scotland. It got off to the perfect start for Scotland in the

swimming pool. Hannah Miley brought victory for Scotland in the 400

metres individual medley. It was the sort of entities team Scotland

needed. This was the moment when team Scotland won their first

Olympic medal at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Kimberley

Renicks's victory in the under 48 K category brought the crowd to their

feet. Emotion was clear to see. Soon after, another judo medal. John

Buchanan came out of retirement for these games and one bronze for

Scotland in the sub 60 K category. James Miller also won a bronze for

Scotland. Then Scotland versus England and another goal for the

sister of Kimberley with her victory in the 52 kilograms division. Connie

Ramsey was head over heels with hard drawings and could night in the judo

hall end as it began with a Gold medal? Not quite. England won the

Gold medal. Aileen McGlynn giving it everything she has, but Helen Scott

just had too much speed for them. The first medals for Team Scotland

came in the para cycling. Scotland's Aileen McGlynn and Louise

Haston took silver in the B-2 tandem. Sophie -- Sophie Thornhill

and Helen Scott won gold. David McNamee in the triathlon, although

the Brownlee Brothers put bums on seats. Another Scot threatened to

put a cat amongst the Swans. Mark Austin stuck manfully for a while

but on the final lap of the cycling, the pace of the Yorkshire brothers

was too much. Austin was used up and finished 21st, Olympic champion

Alistair Brownlee won gold. Johnny Brownlee got solver. David McNamee

to highest placed Scot. He finished seventh. There was a resounding

victory for Scotland in the team Badminton in their first group C

match. They beat seashells on the seashore well, on the shores of the

Clyde. It has been quite a day for Team Scotland. Whew, how important

was at that Team Scotland got off to a good start to get the country

behind them? Very much, given that these events will be good chances,

very strong in world terms, not just Commonwealth Games, the breast

stroke, for example. Scotland finished this evening third in the

medal table, behind England and Australia. It has been a good day,

interesting to see how it pans out in the weeks ahead. Thank you,

Jonathan. Now, we all know that

the house never loses, So should we pay more

attention to the odds than There is serious academic research

that suggests bookmakers are better at predicting the result

of elections than opinion polls. So what do the bookmakers think

will happen in September? With eight weeks until the

referendum, the keys are already taking a flood of bets. They say

they have already raked in ?5 million from punters across Britain,

more than either Yes Scotland or better to gather are allowed to

spend during the campaign. One group of bookmakers say that single bets

are between ten and ?20,000, and there has been one bet on ?100,000

on a no in September. If I have ?2000 to put in a bed, what would I

win? You would win your money back plus ?8 million profit, make you a

millionaire. So I make a lot more money if it was a yes vote. When it

comes to political betting, the big bookies take things seriously. They

employ specialist that it'll all the centres to help work out what will

happen and say they have a good track record. In 1992, few polls

predicted John Major would win the election. Bookies saw it differently

and were right. In 2011, polls suggested the SNP would lose control

of Holyrood until just a few weeks before the election. Bookmakers were

more confident the SNP would win and they were right again. You won't be

surprised to learn some pollsters find the comparison with bookmakers

unflattering. It is interesting but I would argue that the polls are a

more representative sample of the population, not just a small

proportion who commit money and bets, and bookmakers used to polls

and many other leading pollsters conduct as their major source of

information. So is political betting just another way of frittering away

your money or does it give us a useful way to forecast the

referendum? With me

in the studio is the economist Professor David Bell, who's been

researching this very subject. It's not just chanced the bookies

have it right sometimes when the polls happened, there is research

behind this. There is, betting on political outcomes goes back to the

1840s and the evidence is that over time, these betting markets have

done pretty well and in fact tended to do a little better than opinion

polls. How do they know something the pollsters don't? They are trying

to predict the election, not ask people how they will vote today,

when you go into a betting shop you work out, based on all the

information you have, what will happen at the time of the election,

and so it is trying to do a different thing but trying to use

all possible information because your money depends on it. Some of

that information will come from opinion polls but elsewhere as well.

Every possible source of information you can get, and an average people

tend to get it right. We have seen this in other countries. There is

evidence from the US, Australia, that these kinds of markets are good

at predicting elliptical and events in general. Right now what do the

markets tell us? What happens in 2014 is that there was a bit of a

blip for the No campaign around the time that Mr Osborne made his

pronouncement on the currency, but since then, the No campaign has gone

back to where it was, which is in the high 70% chance of a no vote.

That is currently what implicitly the bookmakers are saying. It is

this same direction of travel as the opinion polls at a higher value on a

no vote. You could have a situation where there was a narrow opinion

poll difference, but if you thought it would not change, why not vote on

the leading contender? Thank you, Professor David Bell.

Now let?s take a look at what is making headlines around the rest

France 24 reports a plane from Algeria's national airline has

crashed with French citizens on board. At least 50 people have been

killed and more than 200 injured when a UN run school used as a

shelter in Gaza was shelled, and Marianne Ibrahim, the Sudan' woman

who fled after renouncing Islam, has met the Pope.

And tonight, joining me are a couple of journalists, the columnist

Kevin McKenna, who writes for the Observer, and the political editor

Let's pick up on the story about the ban on prisoners voting. The

government's argument seems to be that people do not want prisoners to

have the vote, so they shouldn't have it, but there is a legal

position as to whether it is in contravention of human rights. Can

they legislate based on the electorate not being in favour of

it? That is what the SNP and has done. With the backing of other

parties. This is a populist decision. It runs contrary to the

instinct of the SNP, which the rest of the time tries to portray itself

as the poster boys of the European Convention of human rights, that

they seem to have gone against that because I cannot see what any

disadvantage from trying to include people who have offended in in

gauging them in the democratic process and civilising them and

perhaps reducing the propensity to crime. Is it true they public do not

want to see prisoners having the vote? Most people would be horrified

at prisoners having the vote and the hand-wringing is all very well but

it is clear the SNP have taken this as a brutal electoral calculation,

they don't want to do something unpopular this close to the

referendum, but they have got to the right decision even through that

logic, which is that if you commit a crime such as murder, you forfeit

your democratic right, so there should not be a vote for convicted

criminals in jail. But they are happy to wring their hands about how

much money is wasted trying to curb reoffending. Let's move on to a

story on the front page of the Independent today, sorry to bring up

an exclusive in another newspaper, but a big donor to the Tory party

and the better to gather campaign, Ian Taylor, his company is legally

avoiding UK tax according to the Independent, who say they have paid

a small proportion of their profits tax. Does this damage the Yes

campaign that back in the No campaign or the Conservative Party?

Home any votes it will cost I am not sure, but the Scottish example,

better to gather, have had a lot of problems with this, last year

various business practices were highlighted that some people were

uncomfortable with, and although legal, this is very wealthy and

massive company not paying a lot of tax which will frustrate people,

especially when the No campaign is already sensitive about some being

seen as a Tory campaign when they are trying to attract Labour

supporters. Every time we get a celebrity endorsement of the yes or

no campaigns, people say they will not be swayed by what famous people

say. Will a be swayed by who donates? I do not think so but I

think the peoples who are donating lots of money are hoping that will

sway political parties to legislate according to the special interests

of those donors. Why would they be paying that amount of money? We had

this absurd situation the other week with the Russian donor who paid

?160,000 to play tennis with Boris and David Cameron. The wife of a

Russian oligarch. This will be reducing modern politics to the only

way you are going to eradicate any bad smell is just to ban all private

political donations. That may not happen in a hurry. Let's come back

to the Commonwealth Games because we have to. There was a story today

that the Red Arrows fly past last night at the opening ceremony, the

organisers asked if it could be blue and white smoke for a saltire and

the MoD declined and said it had to be red white and blue because they

are the British Red Arrows. Who is being petty? I think the UK

Government are being petty. Both sides have promised not to

politicise the games but there has been a little citation on both

sides. Alex Salmond called a Glasgow freedom city within a few words of

denying he was on a political ordnance, and this seems ludicrous,

at a late stage it was going to be blue and white for the South Park at

the UK Government vetoed the plan and insured it would be the colours

of the union Jack -- blue and white for the saltire. This is

self-defeating because in the political bubble we discuss currency

and the finer details of EU entry that this kind of pathetic stamping

of feet I think is what puts people off. But would it have made the UK

Government look more broad-minded if they allowed a saltire to fly over

Glasgow? What were the afraid it? I think the UK Government and Scottish

government missed an opportunity and they could have had the fly past in

the colours of the rainbow nation in memory of the recently deceased

Nelson Mandela. That would have been an imaginative way around the

politics but maybe people were not thinking that creatively. The Red

Arrows were flying past as Her Majesty The Queen arrived at the

opening ceremony and she was out again today, showing a bit of wit

and humour. The Australian hockey team were taking selfies of each

other and posted this picture online, in which they are

photobombed by the Queen. They may have had no idea when they took this

picture that smiling in the back was the Queen. It looks like she has a

sense of humour. It is a great photo and a rare sight to see her smile so

broadly. At the opening ceremony we didn't get the James Bond Parachute

like at the London Olympics, so it is good to see the Queen's sense of

humour has come out. And she obviously knows what a selfie is and

how to photobomb, quite impressive for an 80-year-old. She has

obviously been listening to her grandsons. I am told she has an

astringent sense of humour within the context of her many houses. It

is fascinating to have it here at a time when the SNP do not there

suggest we wouldn't have a monarchy in an independent Scotland. She is

still ready popular. I'm sure she is popular in sections and unpopular in

others. They carefully avoided that question and I am sure they will

avoid it for the next ten days. question and I am sure they will

Thank you for coming in. That's it for now. We will be back on Monday.

Please do join us then.