Member

In advancing the amendments before us, we must make a principled case for just deserts. Just deserts essentially mean that people get what they deserve. Those who choose by any means to get what they want, including by violence, deception and harm to others, deserve to be punished. It is so obvious—so intuitively right—that it is what the overwhelming majority of decent, law-abiding people feel. It is what our constituents expect us to recognise and to act on. Those who suffer from the fear and reality of crime are frustrated, to say the least, that the old order—the liberal orthodoxy that has dominated public discourse for too long—does not recognise that plain fact.