"Alan Turing law" is an informal term for the portion of thePolicing and Crime Act 2017[1] which serves topardon men who werecautioned orconvicted under obsolete lawscriminalising homosexual acts.[2] The provision is named afterAlan Turing, theWorld War IIcodebreaker and computing pioneer, who was convicted ofgross indecency in 1952. Turingreceived a royal pardon posthumously in 2013. The law applies to convictions inEngland and Wales (including military offences, which are tried under English law) andNorthern Ireland; a similar law, theHistorical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) (Scotland) Act 2018,[3] was later passed by the Scottish Parliament.
Several proposals had been put forward for an Alan Turing law,[4][5][6] and introducing such a law was government policy since 2015.[7] To implement the pardon, the British Government announced on 20 October 2016 that it would support an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill that would provide a posthumous pardon, also providing an automatic formal pardon for living people who had had such offences removed from their record.[8][9] A rival bill to implement the Alan Turing law, insecond reading at the time of the government announcement, wasfilibustered.[10] The bill receivedroyal assent on 31 January 2017, and the pardon was implemented that same day.[11] The law provides pardons only for men convicted of acts that are no longer offences; those convicted under the same laws of offences that were still crimes on the date the law went into effect, such ascottaging,underage sex, or rape, were not pardoned.[12]
Manchester Withington MPJohn Leech, often described as 'the architect' of the Alan Turing Law, led a high-profile campaign to pardon Turing and submitted several bills to parliament, leading to the eventual posthumous pardon.[13]
Allhomosexual acts between men were illegal until the passing of theSexual Offences Act 1967 inEngland and Wales, theCriminal Justice Act 1980 in Scotland, and theHomosexual Offences Order 1982 in Northern Ireland. As the three regions are separate jurisdictions, and many elements of criminal law aredevolved matters in the United Kingdom, the British Government, by convention, only legislated a pardon for England and Wales.[12]
Alan Turing, after whom the proposed law has been informally named, was amathematician,codebreaker and founding father ofcomputer science who died in 1954 in suspicious circumstances, following his conviction forgross indecency in 1952. A campaign to pardon Turing was led by former Manchester Withington MPJohn Leech,[14] who called it "utterly disgusting and ultimately just embarrassing"[15] that the conviction was upheld as long as it was. Turing himself was pardoned posthumously through theroyal prerogative of mercy underDavid Cameron in 2013,[16][17] but contrary to the requests of some campaigners including Leech, theAstronomer RoyalMartin Rees and the activist and journalistPeter Tatchell, his pardon was not immediately followed by pardons for anyone else convicted.[18][19] Leech submitted several motions and campaigned for half a decade as an MP for a more general pardon and continued to do so after losing his seat in the2015 general election.[20]
TheProtection of Freedoms Act 2012 proposed by David Cameron introduced thedisregard procedure, under which men with an offence of "gross indecency between men" on theircriminal record could petition to have these offences disregarded during criminal record checks by courts and employers, but fell short of an actual pardon.[7]
While in opposition, the Labour Party underEd Miliband announced that it would introduce an Alan Turing law if elected at the 2015 general election.[21] The Conservative Party under Cameron subsequently announced the same policy.[7] WhenTheresa May became Prime Minister following the resignation of David Cameron, she also announced that her government would support the Alan Turing law.[22][23]
In June 2016,John Nicolson MP introduced aPrivate Member's Bill, the Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc.) Bill 2016–17, intended to implement the proposal.[24] In October 2016, theConservative government announced that, instead of supporting the Private Member's Bill's original proposal for a blanket pardon for all, it would enact the proposed changes through an amendment to the forthcomingPolicing and Crime Bill 2016. This amendment would provide a posthumous pardon for the dead, make it easier for living individuals to clear their names, and also provide an automatic formal pardon for living people who had had such offences removed from their record through the disregard process.[8][9][25] When Nicolson's bill was debated in Parliament on 21 October 2016, it was successfullyfilibustered by Conservative MPSam Gyimah and failed to proceed.[26]
The two differed in the process for dealing with cases where the conviction was for an act that would still be considered an offence under current law. Both attempted to exclude these, but Nicolson's bill provided an automatic pardon while the government bill required the petitioner to go through the "disregard process" first. This would mean that theHome Office will investigate each case involving living people to ensure that the act that the petitioner was convicted of is no longer considered a criminal act, to avoid pardoning men convicted ofunderage sex or rape.[12] More controversially, this means that it would also not pardon men who were arrested inpublic toilets, as they would today be guilty of the offence of "sexual activity in a public lavatory".[27] The government claimed that without this check, men who were convicted of such an offence would be able to claim that they had been pardoned.[10] Nicolson disagreed and, backed by the LGBT campaign groupStonewall,[27] said that the government was attempting to "hijack" the law by announcing the amendment just prior to thesecond reading of his Private Member's Bill, and said that his bill already excluded cases where the offence was still considered a crime.[28] The Nicholson bill would not have been able to clear criminal records of men who still carried convictions. This would still have to be done through the disregard process, leading to possible cases in which it would not be clear whether or not a pardon had been granted, described by James Chalmers,Regius Professor of Law at theUniversity of Glasgow, as a "Schrödinger's pardon".[29]
On 19 October 2016, LiberalBaron Sharkey, with government support, had added the core amendment to the agenda for the Policing and Crime Bill 2016.[30] The proposed pardon process, like the disregard process in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 as passed, applied only to England and Wales. Groups inNorthern Ireland andScotland campaigned for equivalent laws in their jurisdictions.[31][29] In the Lordscommittee stage debate on 9 November, Sharkey's amendment was accepted, while a proposal byLord Lexden to extend the disregard and pardon processes to Northern Ireland was deferred byBaroness Williams, to see if theNorthern Ireland Assembly would agree to the necessarylegislative consent motion.[30] The assembly consented on 28 November, and Lexden's proposal was accepted at Lordsreport stage on 12 December, along with one fromMichael Cashman extending the power of disregard and pardon to further offences.[30] The Commons agreed to the relevant Lords amendments on 10 January 2017[32] and the bill receivedroyal assent on 31 January 2017 as the Policing and Crime Act 2017.[11]
The Turing law provisionscame into force immediately in England and Wales,[33] and on 28 June 2018 in Northern Ireland.[34] The provisions were not extended to Scotland becausethe Scottish government was planning a similar measure,[30] which became theHistorical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) (Scotland) Act 2018.[35]
The announcement was broadly welcomed, but some quarters said it did not go far enough. The campaigner George Montague said that he would refuse a pardon, as a pardon suggested that he was guilty of a crime, and instead asked for a government apology.[12]Peter Tatchell welcomed the law but noted "a few omissions. It does not explicitly allow for the pardoning of men convicted ofsoliciting andprocuring homosexual relations under the1956 and 1967 Sexual Offences Acts. Nor does it pardon those people, including somelesbians, convicted for same-sexkissing and cuddling under laws such as thePublic Order Act 1986, the common law offence ofoutraging public decency, theTown Police Clauses Act 1847, theEcclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860, ... and other diverse statutes".[36][37]
Matt Houlbrook, Professor of Cultural History at theUniversity of Birmingham, said that the announcement was of both "symbolic and practical importance" togay men still living with the offences on their criminal record, but noted that using Alan Turing as a figurehead retroactively gave him an identity as a "gay martyr" that he never sought in life.[27][38] James Chalmers,Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, noted that the disregard process had already provided an effective pardon, and neither implementation of the Alan Turing law would be able to pardon people who had committed acts that, although technically still criminal, are not usually prosecuted (such as sex between a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old or sex in certain public places).[29]
As of January 2017[update], some 49,000 men had been posthumously pardoned under the terms of the Policing and Crime Act 2017.[39]
In England and Wales, where homosexual acts between consenting adults was permitted after 1967, there is similar legislation – dubbed the 'Turing law' after the World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing who was pardoned posthumously in 2013 for his conviction of gross indecency.
Lords amendments 2 to 23, 25 to 95, 97 to 133, 135, 143 to 158, 160 to 301, 303, 304 and 306 agreed to.
