PEERS REJECT GAY CONVICTIONS MOVE
Ministers tonight rejected a cross party call for convictions for homosexual acts to be posthumously disregarded.
Liberal Democrat Lord Sharkey spearheaded the move after a posthumous royal pardon was given last year to codebreaker Alan Turing.
This overturned his 1952 conviction for homosexuality for which he was punished by being chemically castrated.
Lord Sharkey said 75,000 men were convicted of homosexual acts under laws repealed in the 1960s.
Legislation passed in 2012, gave 16,000 of them still alive the right to apply to have their convictions disregarded.
But this left 59,000 similarly convicted but now dead unable to get such redress.
In committee stage debate on the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, Lord Sharkey said he wanted equality of treatment for all those convicted of homosexual acts, whether alive or dead.
"This would go some way towards making amends for the many thousands of men cruelly and unjustly persecuted simple for being gay."
He said it would help right an "historical injustice".
Tory Lord Black of Brentwood, backing the move, said it was a "sensible, proportionate and long overdue" change.
To make a distinction between the living and the dead in such circumstances seemed wholly irrational, he told peers.
But justice minister Lord Faulks said that while having considerable sympathy with the principle behind the move, the Government could not agree to it.
A disregard resulted in that person's relevant convictions being removed from the records held by the police.
Where someone had died the "intended effect" of these provisions would not apply.
The 2012 change was designed to "help living individuals get on with their lives free of the stigma of the disregarded offence".
The Government was concerned that there would not be such a "practical benefit" to a posthumous change.
He said such an amendment would introduce a "disproportionate burden" on public resources at a time of limited resources, which could not be justified.
Lord Faulks said: "I appreciate that there is a feeling that something ought to be done to right an historic injustice."
He offered to meet peers concerned about the issue to discuss it with them but warned he could not raise expectations further.
Lord Sharkey branded the minister's response "legalistic and mean-spirited" and threatened to bring the issue back at the Bill's report stage.
