Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill [HL]

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, on his determined commitment in introducing this Bill. I have been involved in the university and research world for a good part of my working life, and one of the jewels in the crown of UK research is information technology and artificial intelligence, in which we are now a world leader. Alan Turing is rightly regarded as the father of modern computing. Without Turing’s seminal, innovative work we would almost certainly have been overtaken in this field by scientists from other countries who were on the same track.

He was based in Manchester University, in the heart of the industrial and commercial north of England, over the Pennines from Yorkshire, where I was born. It was at school there—surprisingly, I guess—that I first came across the names of MHA Newman and the Colossus electronic machine, Pat Blackett and positrons, and Turing’s universal machine concept. I suspect that it was unusual, but we had a very dynamic maths teacher who must have been interested in the early days of computing, or maybe just had a maths friend at Manchester.

It was only later that I learnt of Turing’s involvement at Bletchley Park, and later again that I realised just how significant his work was for the war effort when my husband, a mathematician and engineer, became very engaged with Enigma and the codes and codebreaking efforts of the war years at Bletchley Park, and I suspect that he has one of the more comprehensive collections on the subject outside specialist libraries. He explained to me the seminal role played by the team at Bletchley Park in developing the ideas that would produce the computer I used every day. He also tried to help me to understand the genesis of the internet, but that is a very different story.

I am so happy to be speaking in the same debate as the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who has given the House, not just today but on other occasions as well, such rich memories of those times at Bletchley Park, having been there at the same time as Alan Turing. She has set his legacy in such a vivid context.

From the work he started at Bletchley Park, and continued later at the National Physical Laboratory and Manchester University, Turing laid the foundation for modern academic computer science, an area where over the years British universities have made an outstanding contribution, and which has led, additionally, to a great deal of effective technology transfer which has contributed significantly to the UK economy.

It is worth saying that neither Turing himself, nor indeed anyone else at the time, would have been able to predict the eventual outcomes of his work, and I cannot think of a better argument for continued public funding and national support for blue skies research, where outstanding scientists and thinkers are given free rein to pursue fascinating and compelling ideas. But for his criminal prosecution, which it seems certain led to his untimely death, it is reasonable to assume that Alan Turing would have made even greater contributions to mathematical science and advanced our understanding of human ingenuity yet further. Others have described the circumstances of his death, but in the week where this House has agreed legislation on same-sex marriage, it is tragic to reflect that only 60 years ago, and in my lifetime, it was possible, indeed legal, to prosecute and criminalise a man for having consensual sex with another man.

Anyone who saw Hugh Whitemore’s play “Breaking the Code”—I was fortunate to see Derek Jacobi as Turing—which thematically linked Turing’s cryptographic work with his homosexuality, could not fail to be moved by the poignancy and horror of his story.

Alan Turing was a wartime hero. He was credited with breaking the German Enigma code and with an astonishing number of insights which changed our world and inspired scientists and mathematicians to explore ideas which led to the explosion of technological developments we benefit from today; yet his life and further work were destroyed by the anti-homosexuality laws at the time, laws which the previous Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned as “horrifying”, “inhumane” and “unfair”. In 2009, he gave an unequivocal apology on behalf of the Government for the way in which Turing had been treated.

So my instinctive reaction when I saw this Bill was to assume that it was uncontroversial. However, when the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, introduced a similar Bill last year, the centenary of Turing’s birth, the Ministry of Justice called Turing’s fate,

“a sad indictment of the attitudes prevailing at the time”,

but rejected the proposal of a pardon. I thought this extraordinary and pusillanimous. I want to support the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Rees, the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, and others in their efforts to gain a positive sign of redress.

The issue was raised last June in a Commons debate, so I looked at the ministerial statement in last year’s Commons debate and at other government statements made over the past few years to understand how it was that someone who had received an official apology from the Government could be denied a pardon. It seems that the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, which enables those convicted of consensual homosexual activity to have their convictions disregarded, applies only to the living—so if Alan Turing were alive today, he would have redress. A pardon can be given by Her Majesty under the royal prerogative of justice, but the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said that it is government policy that this should be used only where someone is innocent of the offence and not to undo the effects of legislation which we now recognise as wrong. So there is at least one remedy available, but the Government are unwilling to use it, perhaps to avoid creating a precedent.

However, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has said that he is seeking a statutory pardon, not a royal pardon, something that was quite common historically. In fact, a recent example was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and drawn to our attention in the Library briefing—the Armed Forces Act 2006, which pardoned servicemen convicted and executed for cowardice or desertion. So, far from being impossible or unconstitutional, there is a remedy which has been used quite recently and could be applied in the case of Alan Turing. However, there has been no movement from the Government here either. Horror of horrors, were this to be done for one man, Alan Turing, it might encourage the relatives or friends of others who were treated just as appallingly to seek the same redress. As a matter of fairness and justice, that seems a pretty cowardly argument and one for a petty jobsworth rather than an honourable Government.

The Government described the statutory pardon given under the Armed Forces Act 2006 as a recognition that execution was not a fate that the individual deserved, irrespective of the fact that it was lawful at the time. The conviction and awful punishment was not deserved either by Alan Turing, and that included the humiliation of being categorised as a security risk after everything he had done during the Second World War. Let us at least put this case right, and if in doing so we can offer a means of redress to others who have suffered a similar fate, I personally would be happy to see that happen.