Alan Turing

Robert Flello Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing the debate. I hope that Members will bear with my voice; I am a little croaky this afternoon.

The hon. Gentleman gave a very good overview of the life and work of Alan Turing, including the infamous and famous Turing test, which we all love when we log on to websites and have to type the characters. It is a nice testimony to Alan Turing that every part of our lives these days is touched by his influence. We also heard very good contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) and the hon. Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and for Woking (Jonathan Lord).

The word “genius” is overused—it is a little clichéd, as is “hero”. Nevertheless, it is correct to use them when talking about Alan Turing, and the millions of lives that have been saved as a result of his work. Sadly, the state’s behaviour towards him is, to say the least, shameful and needs to be put right.

I first came across Alan Turing’s work when, many years ago, I moved to a place called Milton Keynes—more specifically, to Bletchley—to take up a job with the Inland Revenue. Every morning, I walked past this huge expanse of an estate, with a high fence around it. It all seemed very strange. Curiosity being what it is, I started to inquire about what the place, Bletchley Park, was and, as Members will know, once one starts to inquire about such places, one soon develops a bookshelf lined with every book going on the subject—code breakers, Enigma and so on. It is a fascinating story, and a testimony to the incredible work done by many people, but especially by Alan Turing.

We have heard that the mission to decrypt the coded messages from the Enigma—the German military typewriter-like cipher machine—was hugely important. Turing had the ability to pit machine against machine. He produced the prototype anti-Enigma bombe, which he called Victory—I think that began in the spring of 1940—and the bombe machines effectively turned Bletchley Park into a cipher-breaking factory.

As early as 1943, Turing’s machines were cracking an estimated 84,000 Enigma messages each month—two a minute. No wonder the Prime Minister of the day called the information that came from them, “ultra”. It was ultra-important and, as I shall explain, ultra-significant.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I apologise for joining the debate late. I want to mention Alan Turing’s partner, Tommy Flowers, who made a massive contribution to the Enigma work. He was a General Post Office engineer, who put electronics into telephone exchanges. I had the privilege of meeting him in the last year of his life. We were trying to get him an honour, but he died too soon. He was the person who used the electronics and the valves. I give all credit to Alan Turing, genius that he was, but the beginning of computing would not have happened without Tommy Flowers either.

[Robert Flello]

I was going to mention the Colossus machine that Tommy Flowers worked on, and I will come on to it in a moment.

Turing personally broke the form of Enigma used by the U-boats that were preying on the crucial north Atlantic merchant convoys, which were full of essential supplies for Britain. Churchill’s analysts stated that Britain would soon be starving if the supplies could not get through. Turing also searched for a way to break into the torrent of messages suddenly emanating from a new, and much more sophisticated, German cipher machine. The British code-named the new machine “Tunny”, and many people have said that the Tunny teleprinter was the forerunner of the mobile phone networks that we all enjoy today.

It is probably worth pausing here. The computing power of the mobile phones that many of us have on silent in our pockets or squirreled away somewhere, is much more advanced than that of the machinery that Alan Turing, and indeed Tommy Flowers, were putting together. Even more remarkable is the fact that the likes of Tommy Flowers used GPO telephony valves, wiring and systems deliberately because they did not want to draw attention to the fact that they were building the code-breaking machines. They were constrained, therefore, because they had to base their work on the sort of equipment that was available in any telephone operating system, and that is testimony to the importance of what they did.

Turing’s breakthrough in 1942 yielded the first systematic method for cracking the “Tunny” messages, which enabled the allies to get detailed knowledge of the German strategy—and that, without doubt, changed the course of the war. It was also the seed for the sophisticated Tunny-cracking algorithms that were incorporated into Tommy Flowers’s Colossus, which was the first large-scale electronic computer. With the installation of 10 Colossus machines by the end of the war, Bletchley Park became the world’s first electronic computer facility.

Turing’s work on Tunny was the third of three strokes of genius that he contributed to the attack on Germany’s codes, along with designing the bombe and unravelling the U-boat Enigma. It has been argued that his work shortened the war by not up to two years, but anything up to four. If Turing and his group had not weakened the U-boats’ hold on the north Atlantic, the D-day landings could have been delayed by a year or longer, because the north Atlantic was the route that ammunition, fuel, food and troops had to travel to reach Britain from America.

Any such delay, of course, would have put Hitler in a stronger position to withstand the allied assault. Fortifications along the French coastline would no doubt have been stronger, Panzer armies would have been moved into place, more V2 missiles would have rained down on southern England, and on the ports and airfields, thereby supporting the invading troops. Each year of fighting in Europe is estimated to have cost an average of 7 million lives, so it would not be far off the mark to quantify Turing’s contribution as 21 million lives saved. That gives an indication of the magnitude of his work.

The hon. Member for Cambridge helpfully detailed the post-war work that Alan Turing did, and I will not delay Members by rehearsing it, but it does bring me on to the appalling circumstances of his arrest, prosecution and sentencing. One has to take stock and question why a man who had done so much to save lives—possibly 21 million, perhaps more—was treated in such a way. When one reads the books, it feels like an underhand way of investigating Alan’s life. Reading them, despite the benefit of history, I started to wonder why he was treated in such a way.

As has been mentioned, the former Prime Minister officially apologised in 2009 for how Alan Turing had been treated—I draw right hon. and hon. Members’ attention to that apology; it is worth looking at—but the campaign has rightly continued since then. Numerous commemorations and international events have been held throughout the centenary year. The Google doodle was mentioned, Royal Mail has issued a commemorative stamp and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) drew attention to the work done with Manchester city council involving the Olympic torch and so on. Many events have taken place to recognise the fantastic work done by Alan Turing.

However, we are always brought back to the cul-de-sac that is the 1952 conviction. Hon. Members have given it a lot of thought, and work is going on in the other place on a private Member’s Bill. On legal precedent, are we as a Parliament not about setting legal precedent? Is that not our job? Is it not what we do every day in this place? We come up with new laws, improve laws, change laws and, where they are wrong, correct them. The posthumous conditional pardon in November 2006 of the soldiers shot at dawn was the right thing to do. It was absolutely correct. I am sure that even if that does not set a precedent, it might give us a clue about how to get around the issue.

I hope that Lord Sharkey’s Bill in the other place will find its way through Government time to be considered. I also hope that when the Minister replies, he will confirm that when a private Member’s Bill comes forward in this House, it will be looked on favourably by the Government. I certainly hope so. Whatever we do after this debate, one thing is certain: we must find a way to recognise and in some way pardon Alan Turing for what happened, so that we can hold him up as the hero he was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

The Department’s problem is that it is extremely difficult to make a sensible analysis that could be relied on. The living can apply to have their convictions disregarded, but I would think that more than 100,000 people have been convicted of these crimes over two centuries, so the potential scale of applications is enormous.

There is also the question of justice. The sex offences of which Alan Turing was convicted are still capable of being offences in certain circumstances where the other party was under age or the sex was non-consensual. In such circumstances, a pardon would be not only inappropriate, but wrong. The records for some older cases would no longer be available, and the way such offences were recorded would make it difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether a pardon was in fact justified. It is to avoid that problem that the Government have gone down the route of a disregard by application.

It is also worth noting that the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy has changed over time. Centuries ago it was exercised by the monarch in an unfettered way. In modern times, however, the exercise of the prerogative is not exercised by Her Majesty personally but on the advice and recommendation of a Secretary of State, and it is therefore subject to judicial oversight. Whenever someone makes qualitative judgments on such issues, the prospect of review of the reasonableness of a decision is opened up.

[Robert Flello]

I appreciate that the Minister is in a difficult position. The advice he received from his officials will have gone through the reasons why it is difficult to follow the routes proposed, but I wonder—I put this to the Minister in a genuine spirit of finding a way through—whether he could instruct his officials to find an alternative way to reach the same conclusion. Turning the issue on its head, perhaps the Minister will consider, at a later date, talking to his officials to ask them to find an alternative route.

[Mr Blunt]

It may come as a surprise to the hon. Gentleman, but Ministers in the Ministry of Justice and a number of other senior Ministers in the Government have given their personal attention to the issue. We share exactly the same desire of every hon. Member present to find a way of making atonement and recognising the unique and singular achievements of Alan Turing. The formula that the previous Administration alighted on was the formal apology from the Prime Minister. As the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South himself remarked, it is for Parliament to set legal precedent, and opportunities for Members of Parliament in either House to take their own measures were alluded to.

I am trying to make clear to the House the issues that every Administration have had to wrestle with, and the possible consequences of different courses of action. I assure the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members present that the matter has received the closest possible attention from Ministers and officials; it continues to do so and will continue to do so in the light of the debate today and the contributions of hon. Members.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South drew the parallel with the Armed Forces Act 2006, which pardoned a group of first world war servicemen, but that was itself a carefully considered response to an unusual situation. The legislation expressly leaves conviction and sentence unaffected, and specifically states that the prerogative of mercy is not affected.

It has been a privilege for me to reply on behalf of the Government in the debate. It has been of particular importance to me, because my mother served at Bletchley Park during the war. When she finally felt able to speak of her work—like everyone else of her generation, she took her duty of secrecy seriously, and it was only when watching documentaries on Bletchley Park on television that she felt that she might be able to share with her family some of her own experiences—she bore first-hand testimony to me and other members of my family of Alan Turing’s importance. The truth is, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South and my hon. Friend made clear, that everyone in the Chamber and in this country owes Alan Turing a profound debt of gratitude for our political freedom. In my case, that debt is personal, albeit indirectly.

The debate has been an excellent way in which to pay tribute to the great Alan Turing on his centenary. All of us want to find more ways of marking his enormous achievement and service to our country and of continuing to atone for the disgraceful way in which the society of the time treated him.