Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, as a complete layman, it seems to me that the amendment has at least two flaws. First, how do you determine what is ““serious psychological harm””? A 17 year-old who breaks into an isolated farm in which a single woman is living could well not use physical force, but it still might frighten the woman out of her wits. The same thing might apply to an elderly man. Psychological harm might not become apparent immediately but take several months, or even years, to manifest itself. Even ““serious physical harm”” requires some greater definition. Supposing that same burglar were to punch the householder in the face, breaking her nose or knocking out a tooth. Does that count as serious or mild harm? I simply do not know. The noble Baroness may well have an answer to that. The second flaw is the extremely high hurdle required by this amendment to send someone dangerous in some respect to prison. Not only do they have to have committed an offence, but the possibility of them committing another one must be imminent. If, for some reason, they go abroad and are not in a position to commit another offence in this country for six months, there is no imminent risk of an offence; they are not likely to commit an offence immediately. So it must be demonstrable and imminent. I do not know quite how you can demonstrate that they are likely to offend immediately, in a few days or weeks. Perhaps the noble Baroness will be kind enough to clarify exactly what that means.