Mr. Tim Duggan:

It is very difficult to answer that because it is an incredibly fluid situation. In the case of the vast majority of people who have had payments suspended or entitlements suspended, such as free travel, it is not because they are objecting to the card or because they do not believe there is a legislative base for it or anything like that. For instance, almost 4,300 free travel customers have failed to register to SAFE 2 and have had the travel pass withdrawn. The vast majority of those have never engaged with the Department. Essentially, what is going on in that regard is exactly what went on with my own Dad who is in a nursing home and who will never use free travel again, so the people who were dealing with his affairs simply did not respond. That is all that is happening in that regard.

We have had approximately 450 cases suspended; the figure moves all the time. Again, the vast majority of those do not engage and essentially disappear from our system. We believe the vast majority of those have gone abroad, so we have few or no cases where people have definitively objected and refused to engage with the SAFE process.