Background Part 5: Safeguarding vulnerable groups, criminal records etc. Chapter 4 of Part 5: Disregarding certain convictions for buggery etc.
59.The Programme for Government (section 20: justice) said “we will change the law so that historical convictions for consensual gay sex with over­16s will be treated as spent and will not show up on criminal records checks”.
60.The offences that criminalised consensual sex between men over the age of consent in England and Wales were section 12 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (“the 1956 Act”) for the offence of buggery and section 13 of the 1956 Act for the offence of gross indecency between men. Consensual sex in private between two men over the age of 21 was decriminalised by section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 1967; in 1994 the age of consent was lowered to the age of 18 years (by sections 143 and 145 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994); in 2000 it was lowered again to 16 years (by section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000). Such convictions, however, continue to be recorded in police records, principally on the names database held on the Police National Computer (“PNC”), and will appear on a standard or enhanced criminal records certificate issued by the CRB. It is estimated that there are some 12,000 such convictions recorded on the PNC.