Thank you, and thank you Professor Ryder for being with us.
I wanted to finish up Tom's line of questions in a housecleaning kind of way. Through the Imperial Tobacco case, it seems that in an almost black and white decision Major says that it can only apply criminally because that's what the text says.
Whether or not in the future, for example, the principles in the criminal law section start to feed, say section 7, the principles of fundamental justice in serious civil or administrative consequences, which is my own view, so that retroactivity is kind of an inchoate, it's a candidate for recognition in section 7.... That's not the issue. The issue is that it has to be clearly penal at the moment.
You're absolutely certain that this cannot be characterized as penal and that it's not an alteration of the sentence at all. Yet, you've indicated that it's really not about punishment but about deprivation of benefits.
Just to nail that down, so we can move on to how to do this better, is that right?