Alan Turing

Jonathan Lord Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing this important debate, which provides us with a forum in which to consider the past, draw lessons for the future, and, most importantly, pay tribute to one of the world’s finest minds.

For eight years, I served as a councillor for the ward of Little Venice in the city of Westminster. In that capacity, albeit in a small way, I was first able to pay tribute to the remarkable work and life of Alan Turing. On 23 June 1998, I was involved in the unveiling ceremony of a blue plaque on the Colonnade hotel in London, just off Warwick avenue, which denotes the house where Turing was born.

That day, appropriately, marked the 50th anniversary of the world’s first working computer, which ran in Manchester on 21 June 1948. Having undertaken a reasonable amount of research, I was stunned to learn that at the tender age of 22, while at King’s college Cambridge, Turing had developed a hypothetical mathematical device, which is commonly referred to as the Turing machine. His calculations, in turn, provided the foundation for modern computer science. His genius is unquestionable, and one can only speculate about what more, in the absence of bigotry and prejudice, that great man might have gone on to achieve.

On the day after the ceremony, 22 June 1998, the House of Commons voted to equalise the age of consent at 16. The modest ceremony at a central London hotel to mark Turing’s life and scientific prowess occurred virtually in tandem with cross-party efforts to ensure equality before the law, and equality of esteem. I hope that those two events will serve as a reminder that, whatever our political differences, we can and should agree that councils, Parliaments and Governments must seek to liberate talents and never oppress them.

In his maiden speech in June 2010, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) rightly paid tribute to the extraordinary work of Turing and the teams of code breakers at Bletchley Park, in his constituency. He did so again today, with great eloquence. It is not an overstatement to assert that the efforts and expertise engaged in cracking the German Enigma code fundamentally changed the duration, and possibly even the outcome, of the second world war.

My hon. Friend also welcomed the national apology from the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), which sought to

“right the wrong against the brilliant code breaker and mathematician”. —[Official Report, 17 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 1082.]

In 1952, as we all know, Turing was convicted of gross indecency. The courts presented him with a terrible choice: imprisonment or probation with awful conditions attached. The conviction was also to bring about a lifetime restriction on Turing. Post-war, he had an extremely high level of security clearance, as he continued to work for the Government and their agencies. The conviction was to prohibit him from working for the Government—effectively, for our country—ever again.

To avoid prison, and no doubt with the desire to continue some of his work, Turing chose probation. The probation was, however, conditional on his subjection to a course of hormonal treatments that were designed to reduce libido. He underwent a chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections, and within two years he was dead. On 12 June 1954, he was cremated at Woking crematorium in my constituency. What a terrible waste. What a ghastly last two years, in the life of a man who had given so much to this country.

We have had a fitting debate to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, godfather of computer science and pioneer of artificial intelligence, whose wartime efforts at Bletchley Park were responsible for saving countless lives. He is a national hero. He deserves to be in the pantheon of national heroes. I regard it a great honour to add my voice, again, to the tributes that we have all paid him.