OVER my 32 years in the Commons as Blackburn’s MP I must have received hundreds of letters of complaint from constituents who were temporarily (in one case permanently) ‘guests of Her Majesty’ in one of her prisons.

These range the apparently trivial – to the potentially serious, that they have been subject to miscarriage of justice.

I follow them all up, as I do all the other complaints.

In all this time, however, never once do I (or my staff) ever recall receiving a complaint from an inmate that whilst in jail serving their sentence they cannot exercise their right to vote.

Two years ago, though, I did receive two typed letters from different constituent prisoners, in different jails, couched in exactly the same terms.

A Prison Service memory stick had gone missing. The names and some other details of around 600 prisoners were on the stick.

A public announcement was made, and all the prisoners involved were notified.

In the event, there was no compromise of the data.

The stick has never turned up. Almost certainly it went into a waste bin by mistake.

These two prisoners told me how they had lost sleep, been caused great anxiety, through the mislaid memory stick.

As I got to the end of the letter and statement I discovered the real reason for the letter – the prisoner wanted some cash compensation for their ‘anxiety’.

All further correspondence was directed to ‘their’ solicitor, who (surprise surprise) was the same firm, of ‘prison law specialists’ with a less than perfect reputation.

Sadly for this firm the letters to me were part of a bulk mailing they had organised for most of the 600 prisoners.

As Justice Secretary as well as the town’s MP I asked for an immediate investigation into what to me was and is a plain abuse of the legal aid system, with the taxpayer costs of such ‘prison law’ rising from £6million to £20 million in the space of a few years, as the firms ‘gamed’ the regulations.

Today in the Commons the Conservative MP David Davis and I are leading a debate to ask MPs to confirm the long-standing, all-party policy that if you are jailed, you can’t make the law by voting whilst you’re in jail.

Because of a European Court ruling it’s complicated.

But remember one thing.

The 2,000-plus demands for compensation already filed have overwhelmingly not been stimulated by prisoners acting on their own initiative, but by the ‘industry’ of prison law specialists who have spotted an opportunity.