Welfare Reform Bill

I do not think that that is what is happening with overpayments, which are a separate category from these civil penalties. On overpayments, the department has taken the view that if people have received money they were not entitled to, that money should come back to the department, and there is no fault or blame attached in that requirement, so it is quite different from the civil penalty. We have turned our back on targets in many areas, as your Lordships know, and I can assure noble Lords that for the civil penalty there will be no setting of targets either for the numbers or for the monetary value of the penalties imposed. The aim of the civil penalty is not to set targets for catching out claimants. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, referred to the question of encouraging people to use online services. I assure her that we absolutely will not use the civil penalty to encourage people to go online.