Capital punishment in the United Kingdom espionage from "all spies for the enemy" to spies on naval ships or bases. Later, the Armed Forces Act 1981 abolished the death penalty for espionage. (The Official Secrets Act 1911 had created another offence of espionage which carried a maximum sentence of fourteen years.) Beheading was abolished as a method of execution for treason in 1973. Hanging, however, remained available until 1998 when, under a House of Lords amendment to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, proposed by Lord Archer of Sandwell, the death penalty was abolished for treason and piracy with violence, replacing it with a discretionary maximum
United Nations moratorium on the death penalty being its resolution 2005/59 of 20 April 2005, in which the Commission called upon states that still maintain the death penalty to abolish it completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions, "Recalling further" the important results accomplished by the former Commission of Human Rights on the question of the death penalty, and envisaging that the Human Rights Council could continue to work on this issue, "Considering" that the use of the death penalty undermines human dignity, and convinced that a moratorium on the use of the death penalty contributes to the enhancement and progressive development of