Member

That plainly goes to the issue of sentencing. When the Minister introduced the amendment—I listened very carefully to what he said, and I have great respect for him—he said that the rationale was around sentencing. If that is where the government amendment is aimed then, for the same reasons, Section 66 of the Sentencing Act already provides that ability for the courts, when it comes to sentencing and the seriousness of the offence, to deal with convicted criminals by using aggravations based on hostility based on protected characteristics. With one exception, which I will come to, all offences and all characteristics that relate to this amendment can already be treated as aggravated by hostility by the court when it comes to sentencing. For those reasons, in our view, the amendment is simply not needed.