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Offender Management Bill

I merely stress that the writing of court reports takes us close to an issue to which we shall have to return on a later amendment; namely, where the boundaries between the public and the private should fall in our mixed economy, and the question of how far some functions need to remain public functions because they are concerned with the choice between liberty and detention—the sort of punishment which is engaged. I just mark that this takes us very close to that philosophical but also extremely important legal question.