Just in the nick of time to comply with a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, the government today outlined details of a new bill on the issue of prisoner voting rights.

The bill, which will come before MPs next year, sets out three options:

* Keeping the existing blanket ban

* Giving the vote to convicted prisoners serving up to six months

* Giving it to those serving up to four years

This issue was last considered by the House of Commons in early 2011 and at the time I voted for the blanket ban on prisoners' voting to be overturned.

I will stand by that position next time round, because I think a ban is contrary to the rule of law and undermines the democratic principle that voting is both a right and a responsibility.

I've spoken with many people in the criminal justice system who believe that removal of the vote runs counter to the rehabilitation of offenders, and have discussed it with a number of constituents.

Many of them seem to share my view, and that of Dr Peter Selby, former Bishop to HM Prisons and now President of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards for Prisons, who says that “denying convicted prisoners the right to vote serves no purpose of deterrence or reform. What it does is to state in the clearest terms society's belief that, once convicted, you are a non-person...and as such has no place in expressing a civilised attitude towards those in prison.”

I hope that this view will prevail when the new Bill is debated next year, and that my colleagues in the House of Commons support prisoner voting rights.