Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, I note that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has been in his place since 3 pm this afternoon and that he came to this debate straight from the Second Reading of the Modern Slavery Bill. In the circumstances, he might wonder whether the definition of slavery is quite comprehensive enough.
This House has debated the Protocol 36 imbroglio many times and I do not want to revisit all the arguments made in these debates, but I want to emphasise a few points, and I want to comment on the Motions before us and to ask the Minister a couple of questions.
The Government are proposing to opt back in to the 35 measures set out in Command Paper 8897. As I said in our last debate on the subject, I very much support rejoining these measures, especially the improved European arrest warrant. The Government have chosen these rejoin measures very well, although of course they should not have had to choose at all. None of the measures that the Government are choosing not to rejoin is at all harmful to the United Kingdom’s interests. By deciding to abandon some measures and keep others, the Government have wasted their own and parliamentary time. They have unnecessarily spent political capital negotiating all this with the Council and the Commission. By trying to keep the number of rejoins low, they have rejected, at the very least, four perfectly good and valuable measures. The fact is that, very regrettably, the Government have been at best extremely clumsy in the way they have treated Parliament throughout the entire Protocol 36 debate. Others today and in previous debates have listed the delays, the absence of Explanatory Memoranda and the unsatisfactorily worded Motions.
The letter of last Wednesday from the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, notes the Government’s failure to adhere to the commitments they have made to Parliament on this matter. As he says, the Government have persisted to the very end in presenting this House with a deeply unsatisfactory and illogical Motion. The government Motion asks the House to approve the draft regulations transposing 11 measures into UK law. Ten of these are among the 35 measures that the Government are seeking to opt back in to. The Commission has advised that they need to be transposed now if we are going to be able to opt back in to them.
But what of the other 25 measures? The government Motion says that by agreeing to the transposition of 11 measures we endorse the formal application to rejoin all 35. Why do it this way? Why make endorsement of the 35 simply consequential on agreeing to transposition of 11 measures, one of which is not even a Protocol 36 measure? If it was an attempt to avoid discussion of the European arrest warrant then it has clearly failed to do that, as has again been demonstrated tonight.
I entirely agree with the conclusions of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on this matter. It is a profoundly unsatisfactory approach to parliamentary scrutiny and oversight. The approach also raises some questions. The Government are seeking to rejoin 35 measures, 29 of which are non-Schengen. This means that the Commission is obliged to approve our application if the package is coherent and practicable. It seems clear that, provided we transpose 10 measures into UK law, that will be the case. However, that leaves six non-Schengen measures. Here, it is the Council who must decide to allow rejoin or not.
There are some confusing and worrying signals. The Minister has already mentioned Spain. The Times reported last Friday that Spain had forced a concession from the Government on the Prüm decisions. The article said that the Home Secretary, to secure Spain’s agreement to the rejoins, agreed to run a small-scale Prüm pilot. The article went on to list expressions of outrage at this agreement from Tory Eurosceptic MPs. I was surprised by this—not by the expressions of outrage so much but because I had thought, as I said in a debate on Protocol 36 on 17 July, that the Government had already committed to running a small-scale Prüm pilot anyway. I had thought that this was on the Government’s own unforced initiative. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House whether Spain, as the Times reported, had in fact demanded this concession.
Perhaps the Minister can also tell the House whether Spain, as it is rumoured, has used Gibraltar as a reason for raising objections to the opt back in. Is it just Spain? Can the Minister say if other member states have forced concessions from us in our negotiations to rejoin the six non-Schengen measures? It is worth bearing in mind that no concessions of any kind would have been necessary had we not decided to exercise, quite unnecessarily, the block opt-out. I very much hope that the Motion tonight will be the end of this sorry saga, at least in your Lordships’ House. I hope that it will allow the Government to spend their time on more productive and substantive conversations with our partners in the European Union.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
My Lords, I shall be very brief and begin with a declaration that I always make when I speak about European Union matters: I was never in favour of joining the EEC or the Common Market, as it then was, and I am now in favour of getting out as soon as we possibly can. The House will understand that I cannot support the regulations. I do not think they should be made and we should not be part of the European construct.
What I do want to say, and the reason I have risen to my feet, is to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. If he puts it to a vote, I shall, of course, vote for it. I really am ashamed of the Government and the way in which they have handled this whole issue. These regulations were put before the House of Commons, which expected to have a long debate on them, and if possible, to discuss individual matters contained within them. They were so disappointing that the Speaker reprimanded the Government on the way in which they handled the matter, and the House itself was completely and utterly outraged. There was chaos in the House of Commons. The Government have almost done the same here—of course, in a much more polite way. They put up a Second Reading debate with 32 speakers, interspersed with a Statement which took about an hour, before the debate on the regulations. The result is that we reached this very important debate at a quarter to nine.
As has already been pointed out on the opposition Benches, that is simply not good enough. I object very much to Parliament being treated in that sort of way. I hope they will take a lesson from the way they have handled this, and the way in which the debate has been interspersed with criticism from the opposition Benches, to ensure that when important matters of this sort are discussed in future, the House will have adequate time before 10 pm.
Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey
“Disregarding certain convictions for buggery etc: making an application on behalf of another person
(1) In section 92 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (power of Secretary of State to disregard convictions or cautions), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) A person may make an application under subsection (1) on behalf of another person if that other person is deceased and if the following conditions are satisfied—
(a) the applicant can show direct descent from the deceased person or from the parents of the deceased person;(b) the applicant can provide proof of the death of the person for whom the application is being made; and(c) the conviction for which the application is made is recorded in Police Central Records or the applicant can supply documentary evidence to satisfy the Secretary of State that the offence for which the deceased person was convicted or cautioned was not non-consensual, did not involve persons under the then age of consent and did not take place in a public lavatory or other proscribed public place and was not otherwise a criminal offence.”(2) In section 93 of that Act (applications to the Secretary of State)—
(a) in subsection (2)(a), at the end insert “or if applying on behalf of a deceased person, the name and dates of birth and death of that person”;(b) in subsection (2)(b), at the end insert “or if applying on behalf of a deceased person, the name and address of that person at the time of the conviction or caution”.”
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, in 2012 we passed the Protection of Freedoms Act, which allowed all those men convicted under the Labouchere amendment of 1865 and similar homophobic laws to apply to have their convictions disregarded. Some 75,000 men were convicted under these Acts; 16,000 of them are still alive and may apply to have their convictions disregarded—around 200 already have done so. However, 59,000 similarly convicted men are now dead, and the Protection of Freedoms Act makes no provision for them.
At every opportunity since the passing of this Act, I have tried to do something about this—quite often at 10 pm at night. I have tried to amend the Act so that the applications for disregard can be lodged for those now dead as well as for those still living. This seems to me a matter of elementary justice, fairness and equal treatment, and a matter of granting comfort to the families and friends of those convicted but now dead. It is a matter of providing public recognition of a wrong done. It would bring an appropriate closure to a long-running injustice against homosexual men.
In Committee on the Bill, I tried again to do this, to bring about equality of treatment for the victims of our past homophobic laws for the living and for the dead. Once again, the Government felt unable to agree and put forward two arguments. The first was that the intention of the disregard for the living was essentially practical. It was to enable convicted individuals to get on with their lives without the stigma of the disregarded offence. Since the last convictions were more than 40 years ago, this will have had a welcome, but very limited, effect. In any event, this is surely only a part of the purpose of the disregard. It overlooks the comfort provided to families, friends and lovers and it overlooks the public recognition of the wrongs done to those men.
The Government’s second argument seemed to have more force. They were concerned that extending the disregard would place a disproportionate burden on public resources. For example, they were concerned about the cost and time involved in finding records that predated the establishment of the National Policing Improvement Agency’s central database. However, in rejecting my amendment, the Minister agreed to facilitate meetings with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to discuss the matter. I was very grateful that these meetings took place last Tuesday and Thursday, during which it became clear that the Home Office officials’ concerns about disproportionate time and costs in extending the disregards had three basic components. The first was the danger of being overwhelmed by bulk applications. The second was the sheer difficulty in finding older records; it was pointed out to me that there was no central database for very old records, some of which may be held in local police stations or may not exist. Even if they did exist and were found, they might not contain sufficient information to qualify a person for a disregard. The third problem was the danger of spoof applications—in other words, applications lodged on behalf of an allegedly deceased person while that person was still alive. It was extremely helpful to have these concerns explained, for which I owe a debt to the Minister and to his officials.
This explanation of the likely difficulties has enabled me to revise my Committee amendment considerably. The amendment now before your Lordships addresses each of the Home Office’s concerns. The first part of the amendment addresses the concern about bulk applications by restricting the class of people who may apply on behalf of a deceased person to the direct descendants of that person or to their parents.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for his continued concern and interest in this matter, and for his elegant and accurate summary of the progress of the amendment and the resultant meetings that took place with me, my noble friend Lord Bates and Home Office officials. I hope that the noble Lord is reassured that the Government now recognise his concerns, which have been eloquently supported this evening by my noble friend Lord Lexden, as they were in Committee.
The Protection of Freedoms Act reflected the Government’s determination that people’s lives should not be unfairly blighted by historical convictions for consensual gay sex with people over 16. However, where someone has died, these provisions would not have the same effect. The Government accept that, as well as removing obstacles for the living to find work, there is a recognition that a disregard puts right a historic wrong, and that this would apply to the deceased as well as the living.
Following the helpful discussions the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, had with me, my noble friend Lord Bates and Home Office officials, the Government are willing to explore ways of achieving disregards for the deceased, over a longer timescale. What I mean by “over a longer timescale” is not while this Bill is going through its process and not by Third Reading, as I understand my noble friend was indicating. He may ask why not. We have made some progress, but officials would want to carry out a full and proper assessment. Some issues that require attention include a precise definition of who could apply on behalf of the deceased. We have made progress in that. There is an assumption that the amount of applications will be manageable, but we want to carry out more work to obtain greater confidence on this, as each application does place a significant burden of work on the police in tracing local records. On documentary evidence, the effect of a disregard is not clear, as there are no police records to delete, and we would not want to destroy historic records from the National Archives.
These points were touched on in our meetings, but officials are most anxious that all those matters should be completely resolved before proceeding to legislate rather than to impose too heavy a burden, when we ask them to focus on so many other issues. We want to ensure that the decision to disregard maintains the current exacting standard to ensure that only the deserving are granted a disregard. Of course, there are very deserving cases.
While I cannot accept this amendment and I am not committing to introduce such a change in this Bill, the Home Office repeats its commitment to consider this matter and would be happy to include the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, in any further discussions. He has done the House a great service by bringing this to our attention but I hope the assurances that I have given will allow him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Sharkey
I thank the Minister for his reply and am grateful for the progress that we have been able to make in advancing the case for the posthumous disregard. I would have been even more grateful had he been able to say that the matter could be dealt with at Third Reading, but I understand that it is important to do this in a timely and proper manner.
I would like to know, however, what timescale is envisaged. We know what we are trying to check; we know what assessments we have to make. I wonder whether the Minister can give me some sense of how long it might take and perhaps some reassurance that, when it comes to discussions about the scope of Home Office Bills, there will be some liberality in the interpretation of “scope” to enable an amendment, if we get to that point, to be brought forward in a forthcoming Home Office Bill.
Having said all that, I repeat that I am grateful for the help given by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. I hope that we can make fairly rapid progress from hereon. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey
“Disregarding certain convictions for buggery etc: making an application on behalf of another person
(1) In section 92 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (power of Secretary of State to disregard convictions or cautions), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) A person may make an application under subsection (1) on behalf of another person if that other person is deceased.”
(2) In section 93 of that Act (applications to the Secretary of State)—
(a) in subsection (2)(a), at the end insert “or if applying on behalf of a deceased person, the name and dates of birth and death of that person”;(b) in subsection (2)(b), at the end insert “or if applying on behalf of a deceased person, the name and address of that person at the time of the conviction or caution”.”
Lord Sharkey
My Lords, next Wednesday night there will be a late second promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall. There will be only one work in this prom: “A Man from the Future” by the Pet Shop Boys, who I am sure are familiar to all your Lordships. The piece is based on the life of Alan Turing and is an orchestral biography for electronics, orchestra, choir and narrator.
The piece as it will be performed is different from its final draft, because after the final draft was completed Alan Turing was granted a posthumous royal pardon. This pardon, for homosexual acts that would not now be illegal, left some with mixed feelings. Andrew Hodges, Turing’s biographer, on whose work much of the libretto is based, said about the pardon:
“I don’t think it’s right in principle to make an exception for one person on the grounds of what they did for the State. It should be for everyone who was in that situation”.
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe—the Pet Shop Boys, as your Lordships will know—will explicitly address this contradiction in the finale of Wednesday’s performance. They say:
“We had to rewrite the ending to point out that the convictions of tens of thousands of other men remain and that hasn’t been discussed”.
They are right to raise this issue. Under the dreadful Labouchère amendment of 1885 and other equally dreadful laws, 75,000 men were convicted of homosexual acts. These laws were eventually repealed in the 1960s.
In 2012 this Government did something to put right this injustice. We passed the Protection of Freedoms Act, which allowed all those convicted under those old statutes to apply to have their convictions disregarded. This would happen if it could be demonstrated that the acts for which they were convicted would not now be illegal. Of the 75,000 men convicted under the now-repealed Acts, 16,000 were still alive and could now apply to have their convictions disregarded. This provides real help and comfort for them, their families, relatives, friends and loved ones, and helps to put right a serious and enduring historical injustice.
However, this still leaves the 59,000 men similarly convicted but now dead. In March 2012 I tried to do something about this. I tried to amend the Protection of Freedoms Act, via the LASPO Bill that was then before us. I wanted to extend the right to have a conviction disregarded to apply to those 59,000 men. I wanted friends, relatives or supporters to be able to apply for a disregard posthumously on their behalf. I said then that I believed that this simple extension was fair and right in principle. I wanted equality of treatment for all those convicted under the cruel Labouchère amendment and other laws, whether alive or dead. I believed then, as I still do, that this would go some way towards making amends to the many thousands of men who were cruelly and unjustly persecuted simply for being gay.
The Government were not persuaded. The Minister said in reply:
“I do not believe that the provisions for disregarding convictions, which are concerned with the practical consequences of conviction, are an appropriate means of putting right the wrongs done to people who are no longer alive to suffer those consequences. As my noble friend himself points out, the numbers involved are potentially very large”.—[Official Report, 20/3/12; col. 876.]
This seems to be very mean-spirited and wholly legalistic. It entirely fails to take into account the feelings of friends, relatives and supporters of those convicted but now dead. It fails entirely to acknowledge a moral duty to help put right a serious injustice. It also devalues the disregard for those convicted and still alive. The purpose of the disregard is not just to help with the practical consequences; it is also to publicly acknowledge a very grave injustice.
The last sentence of the Minister’s response seemed to imply a worry about being overwhelmed by applications for a disregard. I thought that very unlikely. Now there is some concrete evidence to show exactly how unlikely it is. The Protection of Freedoms Act was commenced in October 2012. In a Written Answer of last Thursday, my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach gave the latest figures for application for disregard. There are 16,000 men who may apply. Since the Act commenced, in total 147 have applied. Of these, 13 applied in the last three months. This is not an avalanche. The MoJ has confirmed to me that it is not able to put a cost on processing these applications because they have been dealt with within existing resources.
In conversations I had with the Minister and his officials in 2012, the MoJ raised another objection to the idea of a posthumous disregard. It was concerned that many of the posthumous cases might be so old that there would be no safe way of demonstrating that the conviction in question involved consensual and over-age sex. This did not seem to me at the time to be a valid argument and it still does not. The essence of the application process is that the applicant must supply evidence to convince the Secretary of State that the historical offence would not now be an offence at all. That applies to the living. It would also apply to applications on behalf of the dead.
Our amendment simply sets out to give equal treatment to all those gay men convicted under the cruel and homophobic Labouchère amendment and other Acts. It sets out to treat the dead and the living equally. It would bring closure to an extremely unhappy period in our criminal law. It would give comfort to the relatives, friends and supporters of those gay men convicted but now dead. It would help to put right a serious historical injustice.
I hope that this is an uncontroversial measure and that my noble friend will now take a sympathetic view. It would be very good to be able to attend Wednesday’s prom in the knowledge that we had been able to bring a satisfactory end to this long-running injustice.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I was very glad indeed to append my name to this important amendment. My noble friend Lord Sharkey has explained its aims and objectives in full and with his customary clarity.
As he made clear, a number of sexual offences have been removed from the statute book in recent years, reflecting in many cases a strong belief that they should never have been crimes in the first place. As my noble friend explained, Parliament has now made it possible for those convicted of such offences who are still alive to apply to have their convictions disregarded. My noble friend’s amendment would enable such applications to be extended so that they could be put forward on behalf of those who are dead.
My noble friend has called for this extension before. Concern has been expressed that it might lead to a flood of applications. That seems extremely unlikely in view of what has happened now that living people have the right to have their convictions disregarded. No large number of applications has been lodged. There is therefore no reason to suppose that the right would be widely invoked by the families and friends of those who had their reputations blackened in their lifetimes but would not have been hauled before the courts at all if lawmakers in the past had not from time to time made unfortunate decisions. Parliament has recognised that that should be put right as regards the living. It should now extend that principle to cover all who suffered grave hardship, as the amendment provides. Justice demands it.
Our country’s lawmakers never blundered more seriously in the sphere of sexual offences than when they passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. As a historian of the late 19th century and co-author of a book on the very year in question, I never cease to deplore what happened in a thinly attended House of Commons in the small hours of 6 August 1885, with the Summer Recess looming. It was to prove to be a fateful date in the history of English criminal jurisprudence. Suddenly, without warning or anything resembling adequate discussion, homosexual men were made subject for the first time to harsh penalties for purely private sexual activity that was deemed to be grossly indecent.
It is well known that the legislation as introduced into Parliament had nothing whatever to do with homosexuality. Without most people noticing, an amendment was brought forward by a wayward radical Back-Bencher, Henry Labouchère, which made indecencies between adult males, in private as well as in public, a punishable offence. Labouchère proposed a maximum penalty of one year’s imprisonment. To his eternal shame, the incumbent Tory Attorney-General, in accepting the amendment, doubled the penalty to two years, with or without hard labour, at the judge’s discretion. Thus was created the infamous “blackmailer’s charter”, as it was immediately dubbed, and thus was created a road of great suffering and hardship—a road that was, in Oscar Wilde’s famous words,
“long, and red with monstrous martyrdoms”.
It is not least because so many lives of great men such as Alan Turing, and others unremembered for public achievement, were wrecked as a result of that legislation that we should consider this amendment with favour. It would register and symbolise Parliament’s recognition that a grave mistake was made on 6 August 1885, when a malign change was hurriedly agreed and then passed into law without further consideration in either House of Parliament on 1 January 1886.
There are, of course, other reasons why the amendment should command support, but Parliament’s black day in August 1885 is for me one of the most compelling. I hope that the Government will accept the amendment.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, this has been a short, very well informed and powerful debate. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Sharkey and others for all they have done relating to Alan Turing and to the amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Act. That Act reflected the Government’s determination that people’s lives should not be unfairly blighted by historical convictions for consensual gay sex with people aged over 16. The House is grateful too to my noble friend Lord Lexden for his usual accurate and illuminating historical analysis of the origins of this sad state of affairs, which gave rise to so many convictions and caused so much unhappiness.
A disregard results in a person’s relevant convictions being removed from the records held by the police and the courts. Those convictions will therefore no longer appear on a criminal records check and the individual never has to declare them, in any circumstances. However—this is where the amendment is concerned—where someone has died, the intended effect of these provisions would apply. The provisions in the Protection of Freedoms Act are designed to help living individuals get on with their lives free of the stigma of the disregarded offence. I fully appreciate and sympathise with the intention behind the amendment, but the Government are concerned that there would not be a practical benefit to the change. A disregard would not allow the applicant, on behalf of a deceased person, to say that the deceased person was incorrectly convicted, nor that he or she has received a pardon. It is important to remember the rationale that lies behind this. The objective of the Protection of Freedoms Act, in disregarding certain offences, is that they should no longer affect a person’s life or career. The intention is to support living people who are disadvantaged when they apply for work, rather than to set the record straight.
The Government are still concerned that such an amendment would introduce a disproportionate burden on public resources; reference was made to a similar answer given from the Dispatch Box, not by me but by another Minister. For living people, the Protection of Freedoms Act will amend the data used for criminal records checks for living people. When someone is deceased, the offence is more likely to have taken place prior to the establishment of the National Policing Improvement Agency’s names database. Identifying appropriate records would be a lengthy, expensive and uncertain task. There is less certainty that any records can be identified, and those that are found may be insufficient to be sure that offences were consensual and with a person aged over 16.
The Government are concerned this would place a disproportionate burden on existing resources at the Home Office and on the police service. My noble friend Lord Sharkey referred to the answer he was given by a Home Office Minister to a question about the number of people who had made applications, following the estimate of 16,000. I am told that it is true it has now risen to 192 from 185. However, noble Lords will appreciate that departments are operating under severe financial restrictions. While we believe that the cost of dealing with applications from those whose lives continue to be affected is justified in the current climate, we cannot agree that costs, which we believe will be significantly higher for each application, could be justified in trying to deal with the records of those who have died. In our view, the limited resources should be directed at those who continue to have difficulties as a result of their conviction or caution for these offences. I need hardly stress that there is a difference between a pardon and a disregard.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made an interesting, bold suggestion. He rightly predicted that I was unlikely to swallow the suggestion from the Dispatch Box, sincerely though it was made. My initial reaction is that, if there were to be a blanket amnesty, as I think he was proposing, we would need to go through this case by case to establish whether this act was consensual and therefore within the scope of the Act.
Therefore, while having considerable sympathy with all that lies behind the amendment, the Government are still not in a position to accept it as tabled by my noble friend Lord Sharkey. However, I appreciate that there is a feeling that something ought to be done to right a historic injustice. I can certainly—without, I hope, raising any expectations—at least agree to facilitate a meeting with the Minister to discuss this matter further. However, I emphasise that I cannot raise expectations and the position at the moment is precisely as I have outlined it. In those circumstances, notwithstanding the arguments that have been put forward, I hope that my noble friend will be prepared to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Sharkey
My Lords, I am very grateful to all those who have spoken in favour of the amendment. They have, in my view, spoken persuasively and eloquently. I cannot help feeling that in many ways the Minister is simply missing the point. He talks in terms of practicality and cost; that is essentially the argument that he is putting forward. As I pointed out a few moments ago, there are elements to this other than practicality and cost. There is the notion of moral duty; there is the notion of taking into account the feelings of the friends and relatives of those convicted but now dead; and there is the notion of the devaluation of the disregard for those convicted but still alive if the purpose of this is purely practical and contains no element of public recognition for the wrongs done to these people.
I am sorry that the Minister and the ministry have chosen to take this path. It seems to be legalistic, mean-spirited and ungenerous. I am sufficiently encouraged by the words that I have heard around the Chamber this evening to say to the Minister that, although I will now withdraw the amendment, I will return to it on Report and perhaps use the opportunity to test the opinion of the House at that point.
I finish by saying that of course I would welcome a meeting with the Minister. In fact, I wrote to the ministry on 3 July proposing that. I got a letter back last Thursday saying, “We have passed your letter on to the Home Office because of course the Protection of Freedoms Act belongs to the Home Office”. There was no mention of a meeting or any kind of consequent follow-up; it was just a case of “It’s not our business”. I knew that the Protection of Freedoms Act belonged to the Home Office but I also knew that the Minister was going to be answering this debate, which is why I wrote to him. I expected him, or his department, to answer on behalf of the Government and not simply to say, “Well, over to them and let’s not talk about a meeting”. I am now very glad to hear that he is talking about a meeting. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Sharkey
“Rehabilitation of offenders: equality of treatment
In any case where a statute provides for a person to have a right to apply to the Secretary of State to have a conviction or caution disregarded, the provisions of that statute shall apply in the same way to any relative of any deceased person who would, had they still been alive, have been eligible to apply to have such a conviction or caution disregarded in accordance with the provisions of that statute.”
Lord Sharkey
My Lords, I will speak briefly to this amendment. As your Lordships will recall, there is a provision in the Protection of Freedoms Bill which will, when it is enacted, allow all those convicted of homosexual acts subsequently decriminalised to apply to the Secretary of State to have their convictions disregarded. This provision was widely welcomed in all parts of your Lordships’ House. According to an estimate provided by the House of Commons Library, since the relevant laws came into force in 1885, 75,000 men have been convicted of such now-decriminalised offences. Of those 75,000 men, it is estimated that 16,000 are still living. The Protection of Freedoms Bill will allow these men to apply to have their convictions disregarded; this will provide real help and comfort to them and their families, relatives, friends and loved ones. It will help to put right a serious historical injustice.
As things stand, however, this comfort and rehabilitation will not be available to families, relatives, friends and loved ones of those convicted under these repealed statutes and who have since died. Our amendment simply proposes equal rehabilitation and straightforward equality of treatment for all those convicted under the repealed laws. Under the provisions of the amendment, the relatives of those now convicted under the repealed laws but now deceased would be able to apply to have the convictions disregarded in exactly the same way as those who are still living.
We believe that this very simple extension is fair and right in principle. It would provide some comfort and closure for the families, relatives, friends and loved ones of those who have been convicted but are not able to apply for a disregard for themselves. We believe that all those convicted under these repealed and cruel laws should have an equal opportunity for rehabilitation. The amendment would go a small way towards making amends to the many thousands of men who were cruelly and unjustly persecuted simply for being gay.
One of the men who falls into this category is Alan Turing. This is the year of the centenary of his birth, and the Royal Mail is to issue a commemorative stamp in his honour. I think that everyone would acknowledge that Turing’s work at Bletchley Park on cracking the Enigma code contributed greatly to our efforts in the last world war and that Turing is, of course, the father of modern computer science. I know that my noble friend the Minister is well aware of the injustice of Turing’s treatment and, by extension, is well aware of the injustice in the treatment of all gay men similarly convicted and punished.
In answer to my Question for Written Answer in February, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said:
“It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd—particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort”.—[Official Report, 2/2/12; col. WA 342.]
Those sentiments echo those of the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who, in writing in the Daily Telegraph in September 2009, said of Turing:
“The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. He was in effect tried for being gay”.
He continued by saying:
“I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him”.
Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly. These many thousands of gay men were treated terribly, and our amendment would help to put some of that right. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give this amendment sympathetic consideration and I beg to move.
Lord Bach
My Lords, from the opposition Front Bench I thank the noble Lord for the impressive way in which he moved the amendment, and an impressive amendment it is too. He could not have put the case better. We look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in reply, and we would be very surprised if it is not sympathetic.
Lord Sharkey
I must say that I am extremely disappointed by that response. I would also point out to my noble friend that I was not calling for a pardon, and that I know the difference between a pardon and a disregard. Nor was I asking for the clock to be put back, as perhaps seemed to be the case.
This was, above all, a very simple opportunity to put right a historic wrong. It also seems to me that the notion that there is a large number involved, and that it therefore makes this difficult, sits oddly with the fact that the impact assessment for the Protection of Freedoms Bill showed precisely no cost in relation to the 16,000 who are still alive. It is hard to see how you could multiply that by any figure and get a significant cost at all.
I will end by saying that I feel truly disappointed by the response. It seems unnecessarily mean-spirited, and although I shall withdraw the amendment now, this is something that I shall pursue, and look for support in pursuing, at Third Reading.