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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/no-vote-for-longerterm-prisoners.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="Criminals jailed for four years or more will be automatically excluded from the right to vote" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/min-no-vote-for-longerterm-prisoners.jpg" alt="Criminals jailed for four years or more will be automatically excluded from the right to vote"/></a></p>
<p>Criminals sentenced to four years or more will be automatically excluded from the right to vote when it is extended to prisoners.</p>
<p>And sentencing judges will be given the discretion to stop those handed down a jail term of less than four years from casting a ballot while they are behind bars.</p>
<p>New legislation &#8211; due to be tabled in Parliament next year &#8211; will grant prisoners the right to vote only in elections to Westminster and the European Parliament, meaning that they will not have a voice in ballots for directly elected police chiefs.</p>
<p>The Government announced last month that it was throwing in the towel in a long-running legal battle in the European courts to prevent inmates voting.</p>
<p>But Prime Minister David Cameron made clear that he was doing so reluctantly, and would prefer to retain the ban which has been in place since 1870.</p>
<p>His spokesman said: &#8220;We are responding to court judgments. We have to comply with those judgments and we don&#8217;t want to get into a situation where we are compensating prisoners because we have not complied.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is not something the Prime Minister would do if he were given a free choice on this.&#8221;</p>
<p>Announcing the proposed restrictions on prisoners&#8217; voting rights ahead of a parliamentary statement on December 20, constitutional reform minister Mark Harper said: &#8220;The Government has brought these proposals forward as a result of a court ruling which it is obliged to implement. This is not a choice, it is a legal obligation.&#8221;</p>
<p>The move comes after a man serving a life sentence for raping and murdering his niece lost his appeal over the right to vote while in jail.</p>
<p>Peter Chester &#8211; who is serving life for raping and strangling seven-year-old Donna Marie Gillbanks in Blackpool in 1977 &#8211; went to the Court of Appeal, where three judges unanimously dismissed the 55-year-old&#8217;s case and refused permission to go to the Supreme Court, the highest in the land.</p>
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