Alan Turing law

"Turing's law" redirects here. For the hypothesis about computable functions, see Church–Turing thesis.

Alan Turing, whose 2013 pardon was the impetus for a full pardon.

The “Alan Turing law” is an informal name for the law in Scotland which served as an amnesty law to pardon gay and bisexual men, living or dead, who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. The provision is named after Alan Turing, the World War II codebreaker and computing pioneer, who was convicted of gross indecency in 1952. Turing received a royal pardon (posthumously) in 2013.

The law, known as Historical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) (Scotland) Act, passed with unanimous support in Holyrood on 11 July 2018 and was accompanied by an apology by the Scottish Government to those convicted of same-sex sexual activity which is now legal. Addressing the Scottish Parliament when the Bill was introduced in November 2017, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon said, “Today, categorically and wholeheartedly, as first minister I apologise for those laws, and for the hurt and the harm that they caused. Nothing this parliament does can erase those injustices. But I hope that this apology, alongside our new legislation, can provide some comfort to those who endured them.”

The Act stemmed from a bill introduced by Scottish National Party Member of Parliament John Nicolson in the House of Commons on 29 June 2016, after having been selected in the Private member's bill ballot at Westminster. Signatories of Nicolson’s Bill upon publication included a large number of cross-party MPs including Keir Starmer and Stephen Twigg. Mr Nicolson's bill to implement the Alan Turing law in England and Wales was filibustered by Sam Gyimah, then-Minister of State for Prisons for the Government of the United Kingdom.

A provision contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which received royal assent on 31 January 2017, confers only automatic pardons on deceased individuals convicted of certain consensual gay sexual offences which would not be offences today. Living men convicted over consensual same-sex relationships in England and Wales must apply to have their convictions removed.

The pardons in both Scotland and England and Wales are for men convicted of acts that are no longer offences; those convicted under the same laws of offences that would now be classified as cottaging, underage sex, or rape will not be pardoned.

Background

Homosexual acts between men were illegal until the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 in England and Wales, the Criminal Justice Act 1980 in Scotland, and the Homosexual Offences Order 1982 in Northern Ireland. As the three regions are separate jurisdictions, and many elements of criminal law are devolved matters in the United Kingdom, the British Government by convention, only legislated a pardon for England and Wales.

Alan Turing, after whom the proposed law has been informally named, was a mathematician, codebreaker and founding father of computer science who died in 1954 in suspicious circumstances, following his conviction for gross indecency in 1952. A campaign to pardon Turing was led by former Manchester Withington MP John Leech, who called it 'utterly disgusting and ultimately just embarrassing' that the conviction was upheld as long as it was. Turing himself was pardoned posthumously through the royal prerogative of mercy under David Cameron in 2013, but contrary to the requests of some campaigners including Leech, the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and the activist and journalist Peter Tatchell, his pardon was not immediately followed by pardons for anyone else convicted. Leech submitted several motions and campaigned for half a decade as an MP for a more general pardon and continued to do so after losing his seat in the 2015 general election.

Proposals

The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 proposed by David Cameron introduced the disregard procedure, under which men with an offence of "gross indecency between men" on their criminal record could petition to have these offences disregarded during criminal record checks by courts and employers, but fell short of an actual pardon.

While in opposition, the Labour Party under Ed Miliband announced that it would introduce an Alan Turing law if elected at the 2015 general election. The Conservative Party under Cameron subsequently announced the same policy. When Theresa May became Prime Minister following the resignation of David Cameron, she also announced that her government would support the Alan Turing law.

Rival bills

In June 2016, John Nicolson MP introduced a Private Member's Bill, the Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc.) Bill 2016–17, intended to implement the proposal. In October 2016, the Conservative government announced that, instead of supporting the Private Member's Bill's original proposal for a blanket pardon for all, it would enact the proposed changes through an amendment to the forthcoming Policing and Crime Bill 2016. This amendment would provide a posthumous pardon for the dead, make it easier for living individuals to clear their names, and also provide an automatic formal pardon for living people who had had such offences removed from their record through the disregard process. When Nicolson's bill was debated in Parliament on 21 October 2016, it was successfully filibustered by Conservative MP Sam Gyimah and failed to proceed. The Policing and Crime Bill amendment passed, and received royal assent on 31 January 2017.

The two differed in the process for dealing with cases where the conviction was for an act that would still be considered an offence under current law. Both attempted to exclude these, but Nicolson's bill provided an automatic pardon while the government bill required the petitioner to go through the "disregard process" first. This would mean that the Home Office will investigate each case involving living people to ensure that the act that the petitioner was convicted of is no longer considered a criminal act, to avoid pardoning men convicted of underage sex or rape. More controversially, this means that it would also not pardon men who were arrested in public toilets, as they would today be guilty of the offence of "sexual activity in a public lavatory". The government claimed that without this check, men who were convicted of such an offence would be able to claim that they had been pardoned. Nicolson disagreed and, backed by the LGBT campaign group Stonewall, said that the government was attempting to "hijack" the law by announcing the amendment just prior to the second reading of his Private Member's Bill, and said that his bill already excluded cases where the offence was still considered a crime. The Nicholson bill would not have been able to clear criminal records of men who still carried convictions. This would still have to be done through the disregard process, leading to possible cases in which it would not be clear whether or not a pardon had been granted, described by James Chalmers, Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, as a "Schrödinger's pardon".

Reaction

The announcement was broadly welcomed, but some quarters said it did not go far enough. The campaigner George Montague said that he would refuse a pardon, as a pardon suggested that he was guilty of a crime, and instead asked for a government apology.

Matt Houlbrook, Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham, said that the announcement was of both "symbolic and practical importance" to gay men still living with the offences on their criminal record, but noted that using Alan Turing as a figurehead retroactively gave him an identity as a "gay martyr" that he never sought in life. James Chalmers, Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, noted that the disregard process had already provided an effective pardon, and neither implementation of the Alan Turing law would be able to pardon people who had committed acts that, although technically still criminal, are not usually prosecuted (such as sex between a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old or sex in certain public places).

As the law and the disregard process applies only to England and Wales, groups in Northern Ireland and Scotland have campaigned for equivalent laws in their jurisdictions.

As of January 2017, some 49,000 men had been posthumously pardoned under the terms of the Policing and Crime Act 2017.

See also

• Pardon of victims of Paragraph 175 (Germany)
• Timeline of LGBT history in the United Kingdom