https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016...gay-pardon-law
A Conservative minister has scuppered the progress of a new law to pardon all gay and bisexual men in England and Wales historically convicted of sexual offences that are no longer criminal.
The legislation, put forward by John Nicolson of the SNP, failed to pass to its next stage in the House of Commons after an emotional debate that brought former Labour minister Chris Bryant close to tears.
Nicolson’s bill would have given an automatic pardon to men convicted under the obsolete laws relating to gross indecency with other men. It would go further than an amendment to the policing and crime bill proposed by the government, which only pardons the thousands of men who are already dead, while the living will have to apply to the Home Office to get their convictions overturned.
However, Sam Gyimah, a justice minister, ensured the bill could not go forward on Friday because he spoke for so long that it ran out of time. He argued that the bill did not give strong enough protections against men being accidentally pardoned for sex with a minor or non-consensual sex.
[...]
But Gyimah, a government minister, said: “As well as honouring the dead, [the Nicolson bill] seeks a pardon for the living. We have developed a way to do this without giving any perception that the pardon covers perpetrators of sex with a minor or non-consensual sex.
“What I would like to do today [Friday] is to make a full and open offer to the honourable member to work with officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office and [the gay rights group] Stonewall to give real effect to this pardon for the dead and the living as fairly and quickly as possible.”
This is disgusting