Alan Turing law

[2] The provision is named after Alan Turing, the World War II codebreaker and computing pioneer, who was convicted of gross indecency in 1952.

As the three regions are separate jurisdictions, and many elements of criminal law are devolved matters in the United Kingdom, the British Government, by convention, only legislated a pardon for England and Wales.

[11] Alan Turing, after whom the proposed law has been informally named, was a mathematician, codebreaker and founding father of computer science who died in 1954 in suspicious circumstances, following his conviction for gross indecency in 1952.

A campaign to pardon Turing was led by former Manchester Withington MP John Leech,[13] who called it "utterly disgusting and ultimately just embarrassing"[14] that the conviction was upheld as long as it was.

[19] The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 proposed by David Cameron introduced the disregard procedure, under which men with an offence of "gross indecency between men" on their criminal record could petition to have these offences disregarded during criminal record checks by courts and employers, but fell short of an actual pardon.

[6] When Theresa May became Prime Minister following the resignation of David Cameron, she also announced that her government would support the Alan Turing law.

[7][8][24] When Nicolson's bill was debated in Parliament on 21 October 2016, it was successfully filibustered by Conservative MP Sam Gyimah and failed to proceed.

[26][29] James Chalmers, Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, noted that the disregard process had already provided an effective pardon, and neither implementation of the Alan Turing law would be able to pardon people who had committed acts that, although technically still criminal, are not usually prosecuted (such as sex between a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old or sex in certain public places).