My Lords, in 2012 we passed the Protection of Freedoms Act, which allowed all those men convicted under the Labouchere amendment of 1865 and similar homophobic laws to apply to have their convictions disregarded. Some 75,000 men were convicted under these Acts; 16,000 of them are still alive and may apply to have their convictions disregarded—around 200 already have done so. However, 59,000 similarly convicted men are now dead, and the Protection of Freedoms Act makes no provision for them.
At every opportunity since the passing of this Act, I have tried to do something about this—quite often at 10 pm at night. I have tried to amend the Act so that the applications for disregard can be lodged for those now dead as well as for those still living. This seems to me a matter of elementary justice, fairness and equal treatment, and a matter of granting comfort to the families and friends of those convicted but now dead. It is a matter of providing public recognition of a wrong done. It would bring an appropriate closure to a long-running injustice against homosexual men.
In Committee on the Bill, I tried again to do this, to bring about equality of treatment for the victims of our past homophobic laws for the living and for the dead. Once again, the Government felt unable to agree and put forward two arguments. The first was that the intention of the disregard for the living was essentially practical. It was to enable convicted individuals to get on with their lives without the stigma of the disregarded offence. Since the last convictions were more than 40 years ago, this will have had a welcome, but very limited, effect. In any event, this is surely only a part of the purpose of the disregard. It overlooks the comfort provided to families, friends and lovers and it overlooks the public recognition of the wrongs done to those men.
The Government’s second argument seemed to have more force. They were concerned that extending the disregard would place a disproportionate burden on public resources. For example, they were concerned about the cost and time involved in finding records that predated the establishment of the National Policing Improvement Agency’s central database. However, in rejecting my amendment, the Minister agreed to facilitate meetings with the Home Office and the Ministry of
Justice to discuss the matter. I was very grateful that these meetings took place last Tuesday and Thursday, during which it became clear that the Home Office officials’ concerns about disproportionate time and costs in extending the disregards had three basic components. The first was the danger of being overwhelmed by bulk applications. The second was the sheer difficulty in finding older records; it was pointed out to me that there was no central database for very old records, some of which may be held in local police stations or may not exist. Even if they did exist and were found, they might not contain sufficient information to qualify a person for a disregard. The third problem was the danger of spoof applications—in other words, applications lodged on behalf of an allegedly deceased person while that person was still alive. It was extremely helpful to have these concerns explained, for which I owe a debt to the Minister and to his officials.
This explanation of the likely difficulties has enabled me to revise my Committee amendment considerably. The amendment now before your Lordships addresses each of the Home Office’s concerns. The first part of the amendment addresses the concern about bulk applications by restricting the class of people who may apply on behalf of a deceased person to the direct descendants of that person or to office bearers.
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The second part addresses the issue of spoof applications and requires the production of a relevant death certificate. The third part restricts the timeframe over which applications may be made. Essentially it makes the same process possible for applications for those now dead as for those living, by restricting applications to those convictions recorded in police central records, which go back to 1918. This should ensure that the work involved in processing any application on behalf of the deceased person is no greater than the work involved in processing an application for a living person.
There is one additional feature of the amendment. It would allow applications relating to convictions prior to the establishing of the police central records if, and+ only if, the applicants themselves could supply all the documentation required by the Act. I believe that this revised amendment addresses the problems raised by the Government. I hope that they will be able finally to support the amendment.
I realise, however, that this has been put together at some speed and rather at the last minute, and the Government may feel that they need some time to consider in depth the implications of this new amendment. I hope in that case that they will be able to reassure the House that they will consider the matter very quickly. I hope, too, that the Minister will be able to tell the House that if the Government consider the problems resolved or resolvable they will bring forward their own amendment at Third Reading.
We first debated extending the disregard two years ago. There have been real problems, but I now believe that we have a solution. We are now in a position to provide equal treatment to the victims, living and dead, of our past homophobic laws. We can extend
the comfort and recognition of wrong treatment that the disregard already brings to the living—to the family, friends, lovers and supporters of those similarly convicted but now dead. I beg to move.