Cllr Sykes welcomes Creation of Institute to Recognise Turing

The Leader of the Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Group on Oldham Council, Councillor Howard Sykes, welcomed the recent announcement in the Budget 2014 that a new national Alan Turing Institute will be launched with a £42M fund to help make the UK a world leader in big data research.

Cllr Sykes recently wrote to the Minister of Justice, fellow Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes, supporting the Government’s recent decision to issue a posthumous pardon to the late Doctor Alan Turing, who was prosecuted for ‘gross indecency’ in 1952.

Cllr Sykes said: “This ‘offence’, now abolished, condemned homosexual men for being in consensual relationships and led Dr Turing being subjected to state-endorsed ‘chemical castration’, a disgusting punishment that represented a practice more akin to those of Nazi Germany, and that ultimately contributed to his suicide”.

“This was all the more shocking when you consider that Dr Turing was instrumental in helping Britain to withstand the onslaught of Nazi Germany by leading code-breaking efforts at Bletchley Park during the Second World War”.

“It is recognised that Dr Turing’s efforts in cracking the enemy’s Enigma code and other codes saved many thousands of British lives and those of our allies, and shortened the war by months, if not years. After the war, and before being persecuted for his sexuality, Dr Turing also contributed massively to the development of modern computing”.

“So it is only fitting that a new institute that will bring together expertise in tackling problems requiring huge computational power will be named after this renowned mathematician, code-breaker and computer pioneer”.

The Treasury has announced that the institute may be a brand-new facility or based within an existing university, and that its funding will come from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is headed up the Liberal Democrat Secretary of State Dr Vince Cable.

There is already a Turing Institute at Glasgow University, and an Alan Turing Institute in the Netherlands, as well as an Alan Turing building at the Manchester Institute for Mathematical Sciences.