Mr. John McKeon:

We do not have a percentage for the level of overpayments or a target. We have targets we would like to reach, such as 650,000 control reviews a year and those control reviews should feed into proper management. As for comparators, I quoted the UK example. The last time I looked, about a year ago, the figures in Australia and Norway were about 5% and the figure in Canada was about 4.5%. Not every social security administration publishes the details. The National Audit Office publishes the figure for the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK and is the equivalent of the Comptroller and Auditor General here. We are there or thereabouts. When we look at it on a year-by-year basis, sometimes we are a bit higher than the others and sometimes we are a bit lower but we are always there or thereabouts.

I would not say there is an exemplar. The closest analogue we have is the UK because, obviously, our social welfare system is quite often modelled on the UK, where there is a mixed system of social insurance and means testing. In Australia it is all means tested, which is why we would expect it to have a higher rate. Canada is predominantly social insurance but there is a bit of means testing, while Norway is almost entirely social insurance. To a certain extent, therefore, we are comparing apples and oranges but our closest analogue is the UK.