Mr. John McKeon:

There is none whatsoever. With regard to the absolute number of penalties, it has grown over the years. The main reason for that, I believe, is that they were really only introduced in 2012 and it has taken our officers time to get up to speed and to understand this is an option that is open to them. In fact, it is more than open to them, it is something they should be doing. That always takes time. At any point in time we have approximately 1,600 people on a penalty rate of payment. That is 0.1% of everybody who could be penalised, so it is a low rate. The reason I say this is that I sometimes get representations that people are afraid that we are employing penalty rates. For example, people would have seen the film, "I, Daniel Blake", and they think we have the same process as the United Kingdom has. We do not.

In the United Kingdom if a person fails to turn up once to sign on, he or she is penalised. We do not do that here. As I outlined in my opening remarks, as we are very conscious of people's vulnerability, we offer a double chance to avoid a penalty.