Two convicted murderers have taken their fight for the right to vote while in prison to the UK's highest court.

Seven Supreme Court justices are considering challenges by Peter Chester and George McGeoch at a hearing in London.

Chester, who is in his 50s, is serving life for raping and strangling seven-year-old Donna Marie Gillbanks in Blackpool in 1977.

McGeoch, from Glasgow, is serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of Eric Innes in Inverness. He received a minimum term of 13 years, but due to other convictions will not be considered for parole until 2015.

The panel of judges will hear argument on behalf of both men in a two-day hearing and submissions in response to the pair's appeals by the Attorney General Dominic Grieve.

Chester's challenge at the Supreme Court follows a decision by three Court of Appeal judges in December 2010 to dismiss his case.

At the start of yesterday's proceedings, Aiden O'Neill QC, for McGeoch, told the judges that his arguments before the court were "based solely and squarely" on European Union law.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2005 a blanket ban on serving prisoners going to the polls was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The court said it was up to countries to decide which inmates should be denied the right to vote from jail, but a total ban was illegal.

The hearing of McGeoch's case at the Supreme Court comes days after a bid by two MSPs to give some prisoners the chance to vote in next year's Scottish independence referendum was defeated.

The hearing continues.