Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many armed forces personnel were court-martialled due to their sexuality in the most recent period for which data is available prior to 2001.

Due to the broad range of offences applied to same-sex sexual acts and the record keeping practices prior to 2000, there is no way of conducting a search for data on sexuality based convictions. Court martials were held on a single Service basis until 2009, with the results of such cases being recorded in district court martial books and individuals’ Service records until the introduction of the Joint Personnel Administration database in 2006. Therefore, the data from prior to 2006 is not centrally held in a way which would enable this type of analysis.

The Government encourages anyone who was convicted based on their sexuality to apply for a disregard through the Home Office’s Disregard and Pardon scheme.