My Lords, I support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, extending the provisions to Northern Ireland, and I shall speak to the amendments in my name. I congratulate the noble Lord on the success he has had with these amendments in relation to the announcement from the Justice Minister Claire Sugden. The noble Lord’s record on seeking to achieve equal rights in Northern Ireland, not least on equal access to marriage, is unblemished and should be celebrated because at its very heart is the concept that we should have equality and access to equal rights across the United Kingdom, not based on where we live.
I will quote from two organisations in Northern Ireland. A Northern Ireland-based LGBT organisation replied to the announcement that the measure would go before the Northern Ireland Assembly by saying:
“This is the first time that the Northern Ireland Assembly has made positive moves in respect of LGB&T legislation and we are hopeful that with cross-party support the pardons will be applicable to convictions made against … men living in Northern Ireland”.
I also join the noble Lord in celebrating the work and success of LGBT people and their allies and NGOs in Northern Ireland. Quite rightly, this is their success; and not the least of them is Councillor Jeff Dudgeon MBE, who has been a pioneer, affecting so positively the lives of so many across the United Kingdom and beyond.
Before I speak specifically to my two amendments—214S and 214R—I need to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for his exemplary work over the years in pressing the case for equality, even when some have not wanted to listen to the arguments, noble and right though they are. My only difference with him on my amendments are on two major elements. My Amendment 214S differs from the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and others in two key respects. First, it would grant a pardon to any person convicted of or cautioned for a now abolished offence, providing that they meet certain conditions, regardless of whether they are living or dead.
I disagree with the need to create two different systems for pardoning people in respect of these offences—one for the living and one for the dead. I cannot honestly see the logic of saying to a living person, “You must apply to have your conviction or caution disregarded to be eligible for a pardon,” while at the same time saying, “If you have died, you will get a pardon automatically”. That is not logical, and I am afraid that it appears to confuse the purpose of a pardon and the purpose of the disregard scheme. My amendment makes it abundantly clear that any person, subject to the specified conditions, who suffered a conviction or caution under these offences is pardoned. For those living with an historic conviction or caution, the disregard scheme is available to address any negative consequences caused by a police or other record.
The second way in which my amendment differs from that of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and others, is that it would extend pardons to those convicted or cautioned under Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and its corresponding earlier provisions in the Vagrancy Act 1898. Let me be absolutely clear: this would not grant a pardon to any person convicted or cautioned for soliciting. My amendment makes it clear that anyone convicted or cautioned for any conduct that would now constitute the offence of soliciting under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 would not be pardoned; nor would a pardon extend to a person whose conviction or caution was the result of conduct involving any other person under 16. What my amendment would do is grant pardons for all those persons who were convicted or cautioned for what was once called “importuning for immoral purposes”. The immoral purposes, in many cases, amounted to nothing more, as the Home Office report Setting the Boundaries recognised in 2000, than one man chatting up another man. That report recommended the repeal of the offence, and that was carried through.
On a personal note, I lived through that campaign of hate and fear. I was a 16 year-old gay man when the age of consent was set at 21 and homosexual acts in private were decriminalised. I still had no protection as a young gay man who wanted to exercise his attraction and his love for others. I, too, suffered the threat of coming out of a bar or a pub in places such as Earl’s Court, where a lot of homosexual and bisexual men gathered. We felt safe together, but coming out of such a pub or a club and looking at another man and smiling at him could have possibly got me arrested for soliciting for an immoral purpose.
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It is important to recognise that Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 created a wide offence, used to regulate gay men in ways that we would now rightly find horrifying. Let me give your Lordships two brief examples. The first is from 1979. A man, James Gray, was said to have persistently importuned for an immoral purpose in a public place, contrary to Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956. The evidence against him was as follows:
“A police officer in plain clothes was waiting in a doorway in the Earl’s Court district of London at about 11.30 pm, when many male homosexuals were congregating outside a public house on the other side of the road, as was frequently so at that place and time of day”.
Mr Gray,
“was sauntering around and smiling at people outside the public house … Then he smiled at the officer, whom he clearly believed was a homosexual and, after a short conversation, invited him back to his nearby flat where, he said, there was whisky and they could both spend the night. Shortly after this the officer revealed his identity”.
Mr Gray was arrested and convicted and the conviction was upheld on appeal.
In a more recent case, someone wrote to me and to their Member of Parliament, Matthew Pennycook. He has been investigating the case of a constituent who experienced a similar situation in 1995, with a plainclothes officer arresting him outside a gay bar under Section 32. It ended with the police persuading him to sign a caution to avoid being dragged into court, despite his protests that he had done nothing wrong. He applied for a disregard and it was rejected because the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 has no provision to disregard the unjust use of this law against gay and bisexual men. We can close this loophole in the Act if your Lordships support my amendment. That was in 1995, 21 years ago, probably involving a man in his early 20s whose life has now been ruined.
I believe it is right to extend justice to men such as Mr Gray and the constituent I mentioned—living and dead—who have suffered under a law that operated on the presumption that a man asking another man to go on what might now be called a date was immoral. For this reason, my amendment, Amendment 214R, would amend the Protection of Freedoms Act to enable any person with an historic conviction or caution under Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 or corresponding earlier legislation to apply to have that conviction or caution disregarded. The same conditions that relate to pardons would have to be met, and I stress again that no disregard would be granted to a person convicted or cautioned for an offence that would now constitute soliciting.
For the avoidance of doubt, my amendments change the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, the Government and others in only two respects: pardons granted to the dead shall be granted to the living; and I extend the pardons to those convicted or cautioned under Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and the corresponding earlier provisions in the Vagrancy Act 1898. Nothing more.
If it is good enough for the dead, why is it not good enough for the living? There is no blanket pardon or disregard. A pardon is granted only if certain conditions
are met, and those conditions ensure that no person would receive a pardon if there was a victim—it is the same for the disregard scheme. Pardons and disregards will only ever apply to people who, if they committed the acts today, would be innocent of any offence.
In closing, I find this deeply personal and germane to how we have treated people for so long in this country based on difference. I have never heard a cogent, logical or coherent case for why we should not adopt the approach I outline: the approach of equality, fairness and justice. Therefore, I ask the Government to right the historic wrongs now. To be dragged unwillingly to do so or to hesitate unnecessarily would be, in the eyes of many, to compound the wrongs already visited on so many.