Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Faulkner of Worcester

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[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 Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, have added my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, because I am very happy to be a co-sponsor of his Private Member’s Bill to secure the pardon for Alan Turing, which fortunately needed to make no further progress in Parliament because the Government granted that pardon. I do not want to say any more, other than that I agreed with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and, indeed, Lord Lexden, said. This is a case that deserves widespread support. I hope that colleagues on my own Front Bench will support it and that the Government will respond.