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Offender Management Bill

If I can help the right reverend Prelate at this point, it might assist the whole Committee before we go further with the debate. He is absolutely right to pick me up on this point. It was a slip of the tongue to use ““appropriate”” rather than ““proper””, but it was probably a Freudian slip, because it goes to the root of what he is saying about the difficulty of knowing what a punishment is. I was trying to keep strictly to what I consider to be the proper way of defining ““punishment”” for the purposes of the clause, which is ““proper punishment””. I emphasise that it is ““proper punishment””. I am trying to convey the point that the Probation Service is not making up its own mind about how it should intensify punishment; it is carrying out clearly what the court has asked it to do. I hope that that has not muddied the waters further. I am aware from what other noble Lords have said that, rather like me, they feel that there is an awful lot of semantics in the Bill to make life difficult.