Member

Secondly, the requirement that the risk must be significant before the presumption can be disapplied imposes an unreasonably high bar for the exemption to take effect. We should not wait until harm escalates to a severe level before the court is permitted to act. Any harm committed by someone who should otherwise be in prison is a level of harm that we on these Benches find unacceptable. We owe to the British public more protection than that, and Amendments 5 and 17 therefore remove this threshold, so that any credible risk of harm may justify an immediate custodial sentence.