Miscellaneous and General Pardons and disregards
The 2015 Conservative Party manifesto made a commitment to "build on the posthumous pardon of Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing, who committed suicide following his conviction for gross indecency, with a broader measure to lift the blight of outdated convictions of this nature. Thousands of British men still suffer from similar historic charges, even though they would be completely innocent of any crime today. Many others are dead and cannot correct this injustice themselves through the legal process we have introduced while in government. So we will introduce a new law that will pardon these people, and right these wrongs." The pardon for Alan Turing was granted by HM The Queen in December 2013.
	Under Chapter 4 of Part 5 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 ("the 2012 Act"), which extends to England and Wales, individuals may apply to the Home Secretary for a formal disregard of their convictions for buggery and gross indecency between men. If the Home Secretary decides that it appears that certain conditions are met (for example, the other person involved in the conduct constituting the offence consented to it and was aged 16 or over), the conviction becomes disregarded and is deleted or annotated and will no longer be disclosed, including in Disclosure and Barring Service certificates or in court proceedings. Details of the number of applications for disregards since the scheme began is provided below.
	Sections 164 to 172 give effect to the manifesto commitment, provide for an equivalent disregard scheme in Northern Ireland to that in the 2012 Act, provide for pardons for any living person who has a conviction or caution disregarded under the 2012 Act or equivalent Northern Ireland scheme, and allow the Secretary of State and Department for Justice in Northern Ireland to extend by regulations the disregard schemes to other offences that regulated, or were used to target, homosexual activity.
	Disregards: 1 January 2017
	Applicants
Cases
Cases Accepted
Cases Rejected
Cases in Progress
297
399
95
276
28
	Accepted cases
	Section 12 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (buggery)
Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (gross indecency)
Military equivalents
Older legislation
TOTAL
4
88
3
0
95
	Rejected cases
	In public lavatory
Non consensual
Under age
Not eligible 1
No info found
Unrelated 2
TOTAL
51
8
6
26
14
171
276
	[1] Not eligible - indecent exposure etc
	[2] Unrelated - benefits fraud, drugs possession etc.
	Some cases may be rejected for more than one reason, in which case only one reason is counted in the statistics.