My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for his continued concern and interest in this matter, and for his elegant and accurate summary
of the progress of the amendment and the resultant meetings that took place with me, my noble friend Lord Bates and Home Office officials. I hope that the noble Lord is reassured that the Government now recognise his concerns, which have been eloquently supported this evening by my noble friend Lord Lexden, as they were in Committee.
The Protection of Freedoms Act reflected the Government’s determination that people’s lives should not be unfairly blighted by historical convictions for consensual gay sex with people over 16. However, where someone has died, these provisions would not have the same effect. The Government accept that, as well as removing obstacles for the living to find work, there is a recognition that a disregard puts right a historic wrong, and that this would apply to the deceased as well as the living.
Following the helpful discussions the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, had with me, my noble friend Lord Bates and Home Office officials, the Government are willing to explore ways of achieving disregards for the deceased, over a longer timescale. What I mean by “over a longer timescale” is not while this Bill is going through its process and not by Third Reading, as I understand my noble friend was indicating. He may ask why not. We have made some progress, but officials would want to carry out a full and proper assessment. Some issues that require attention include a precise definition of who could apply on behalf of the deceased. We have made progress in that. There is an assumption that the amount of applications will be manageable, but we want to carry out more work to obtain greater confidence on this, as each application does place a significant burden of work on the police in tracing local records. On documentary evidence, the effect of a disregard is not clear, as there are no police records to delete, and we would not want to destroy historic records from the National Archives.
These points were touched on in our meetings, but officials are most anxious that all those matters should be completely resolved before proceeding to legislate rather than to impose too heavy a burden, when we ask them to focus on so many other issues. We want to ensure that the decision to disregard maintains the current exacting standard to ensure that only the deserving are granted a disregard. Of course, there are very deserving cases.
While I cannot accept this amendment and I am not committing to introduce such a change in this Bill, the Home Office repeats its commitment to consider this matter and would be happy to include the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, in any further discussions. He has done the House a great service by bringing this to our attention but I hope the assurances that I have given will allow him to withdraw his amendment.