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Ministers were warned three years ago that unpaid carers were being treated unfairly and forced to pay out huge sums for minor benefit breaches, a long-hidden government report has revealed.
A Department for Work and Pensions paper presented to policymakers in 2021 detailed how carers – the majority of whom are on low incomes and spend 65 hours a week caring for their loved ones – endure financial hardship, stress and anger after have been severely penalized for violating strict eligibility rules for viewing allowance.
Ministers from the DWP have been fiddling with the report until this week, when it was finally published after repeated lobbying by campaigners and a series of Guardian reports on the carer’s allowance scandal.
Liberation came as renewed political pressure ministers were tasked with tackling long-standing problems with the benefits system.
Stephen Timms, chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, said: “The Government has known for years about flaws that have plagued the Carer’s Allowance payment system, but it has just allowed many unpaid carers to unwittingly run up unmanageable levels of debt .”
The Commission published an eight-page letter she sent a letter on Wednesday to the Social Care Secretary, Mel Stride, asking the DWP to introduce comprehensive changes to Carer’s Allowance to ensure people are “no longer subjected to the distress such overpayments can cause”.
The DWP report was commissioned in 2019 after parliamentary inquiry strongly criticized the department’s failure to recognize the distress and hardship caused to tens of thousands of unpaid carers by the benefits administration.
Although it was completed in 2021, ministers have repeatedly blocked its publication.
The study brings to life carers’ frequent frustration with the arcane rules and often insensitive administration of the allowance. It concluded that the rules were not well understood by carers and were poorly communicated by staff.
It revealed that when carers inadvertently broke the rules, they often struggled to understand why the DWP allowed them to rack up overpayments, often running into thousands of pounds, and were angered by staff who treated them as “crooks” for it , which they consider genuine misunderstandings.
This was revealed by The Guardian more than 150,000 unpaid carers pay penalties, in some cases as high as £20,000, because the DWP failed to notify them when they inadvertently broke the rules on carers’ benefits.
Overpayment occurs when a carer breaks a government-imposed limit which states they cannot earn more than £151 a week in paid work while receiving the £81.90 allowance. Instead of asking carers to repay the amount that exceeded the threshold, the DWP refunded the full £81.90 for each week that was in breach.
This means that a carer who earned £1 more than the £151 threshold over 52 weeks would normally have to pay back £4,258.80 instead of £52.
The problem is compounded by the DWP’s failure to act promptly when it receives electronic alerts that carers’ earnings have potentially exceeded the income threshold, allowing carers to rack up thousands of pounds worth of overpayments over months and years.
The latest official figures show that 156,000 carers are paying back overpayments made in recent years, 11,600 of them paying back sums greater than £5,000. There were 34,500 overpayments last year alone, suggesting one in five unpaid part-time carers were in breach of the rules.
An investigation by the National Audit Office in 2019 found that only a small proportion of overpayments were fraudulent, and an inquiry later that year by MPs concluded that most of the breaches were “honest mistakes” by carers, for who were disproportionately penalized.
Although ministers routinely refer to unpaid carers as ‘unsung heroes’, the DWP report shows carers feel under-supported and under-appreciated. Although they saw their caring duties as a labor of love, there was frustration at the meager value of Carer’s Allowance given that they were saving the state money.
“As an unpaid carer you don’t get much recognition for what you do. If I wasn’t here she [the person I care for] it’s going to be in a nursing home and it’s going to cost a fortune,” one carer told the researchers.
The letter from the Work and Pensions Committee calls on the Government to remove the “cliff edge” which forces unpaid carers to pay the full week’s allowance for each week they exceed the earnings limit. They suggested instead a percentage reduction “when the work on his IT system allows”.
Ramsay Suleiman, Carers The Trust’s policy manager said the report showed the allowance was failing on its own terms. “It’s not surprising that these mistakes are being made when the benefit is so over-complicated, outdated and in urgent need of reform.”
Helen Walker, Chief Executive of Carers UK, said: “We are really pleased to see the DWP’s research into Carer’s Allowance finally in the public domain so that we can start constructive discussions with decision-makers and staff about the future of the allowance for caregivers.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “Carers in the UK are unsung heroes who make a huge difference to someone else’s life and we have increased Carer’s Allowance by almost £1,500 since 2010.
“We are developing an improved notification strategy as part of our ongoing commitment to customer engagement, which will help ensure customers meet their obligations to inform the DWP when there have been changes in their circumstances, building on existing communications.
“We are committed to fairness in the welfare system, with safeguards in place to manage payments while protecting the public purse.”
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