Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in the gap. I declare a sort of interest, which is that Naval Section VI, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, was such a distinguished member, was run by my father, Geoffrey Tandy, and my mother was one of those WRNS in the next-door hut. I did not know that they were treated in a discriminatory way—or rather that the noble Baroness herself was treated in a discriminatory way—but I have learnt something today on which I shall ponder. However, that is not my point.

Will the Minister, in considering his answer, take into account something that has struck me as this debate has gone on? The late Lord Britten, who was a Member of this House although I do not believe he ever took his seat—I refer, of course, to Benjamin Britten —is being celebrated this year. Born in 1913, he was almost an exact contemporary of Alan Turing and lived his entire adult life in a homosexual relationship with the distinguished tenor Sir Peter Pears. Everybody who knew them knew that that was the relationship of both their lives. They were accepted—perhaps without it being declared explicitly, but accepted all the same—as distinguished members of this society.

The recognition that Benjamin Britten had when he was elevated to your Lordships’ House very shortly before his death was in despite of that knowledge. It is particularly important, as we think about what we do about Alan Turing now, that we recollect that. It is at least possible, is it not, that had he not suffered the gross and undignified punishment he endured, as a consequence of which he took his own life, he, too, might have ended up on these red Benches? Had he been so elevated, it would have been no less than his due. I hope that when the Minister comes to reply he will bear in mind that comparison in thinking about how he responds to the Bill.