75,000 men were convicted under the same law, of whom 26,000 are still alive. [1] Only Turing has been "pardoned". My understanding [2] is that the "pardon" implies there was nothing wrong with the law as such, just that Turing is forgiven for having broken it. So while I guess this is better than nothing, I don't know if it's really the way to go about it. [1] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhans…
Sixteen thousand of those men are still alive ... they can all now apply to have their convictions disregarded. I tried to amend it to extend this disregard posthumously to the 49,000 men similarly convicted but now dead...
The Government did not agree with us. They pointed out that, among other things, it would not always be possible in very old cases to know when sexual activity was non-consensual or under age. I think that the Government were wrong then and I think that they are wrong now.
Many of us—including the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I think—regard this Bill as in some sense a second- best or interim option, in that we would have preferred a measure that offered the same comfort and recompense to the families and admirers of any of the many thousands of other individuals, now deceased, who were convicted under the same law. Still, we are where we are, and in Turing’s case the facts and his character are well documented. I would hazard a guess that others whose family members were victims of the same obsolete law and cruel sentence would, albeit as second best, welcome a gesture towards an especially prominent but symbolically representative individual.