by Five years ago Tory MP Nigel Mills asked one of Whitehall’s most senior civil servants if he would apologize for leaving “thousands” of unpaid carers in hardship because they failed to officially claim they were in debt. big on them and thousands of pounds. .
Mills’ directness showed an undercurrent of shock among MPs on the work and pensions select committee. Accused by a whistleblower, and an article in the Guardian, he had launched an inquiry into why so many carers, who were claiming relatively trivial amounts of carer’s allowance, were effectively being accused of benefit fraud.
Two months later the committee issued a shocking verdict: there was no evidence of major fraud; instead, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was largely to blame for the rise in thousands of overpayments to carers – resulting in huge penalties for minor breaches of rules on with how much they can earn.
Administrative failures by the Department meant that carers who claimed the government allowance, but also worked part-time and did not realize that they were exceeding the strict weekly earnings limits (currently £151) were being heavily penalized and unfairly These were mainly “honest mistakes”. Even worse, the DWP could have identified these breaches early on, but did not.
Related: Carers were threatened with prosecution for minor breaches of UK benefits rules
Failure to notice earnings breaches for months or even years could see carers overpaid to between £1,000 and £5,000 and in extreme cases to more than £40,000. At some point, the DWP would contact the claimant, tell them it was the earnings breach and demand that they repay the sums or face prosecution.
The sums were so large in part because of the anachronistic carer’s allowance design. If claimants exceeded earnings limits by exactly £1, they would have to repay the entire week’s allowance (currently £81.90) to the DWP. A breach of 26 weeks would therefore result in a “cliff-edge” refund of not £26, but £2,182.
At the time, the then chairman of the committee, Frank Field, captured the essence of MPs’ anger at this injustice in an article for the House magazine in which he accused the DWP of “disrupting” and “bullying” carers. The DWP, he said, was “completely divorced from human and economic reality”.
Peter Schofield, the permanent secretary of the DWP, did not apologize to MPs, and did not accept that carers were being pushed into hardship because of the refunds. However, he was keen to say that help was at hand: new technology would eliminate the overpayments “in some cases before they happen”.
Related: Who are the unpaid carers, and why have some had to repay large sums to the UK government?
Unfortunately for caregivers, it appears that the technological solution proposed by Schofield did not work. Despite the introduction of the earnings and pension verification tool (known as VEP) the number of overpayments (26,700 in 2022-23) and amounts refunded (36 were more than £20,000, and 835 between £5,000 and £20,000) still exists. brutal high.
Although the VEP technology used by the DWP issues thousands of alerts a month identifying when a carer’s earnings rise above the limit – often through a pay rise or new job – less than half are investigated. Five years ago, MPs blamed understaffing issues for the failure to carry out timely checks, and this area still appears to be under-resourced.
The DWP says it is not responsible for overpayments, that claimants have a legal duty to notify any changes to their earnings that exceed their limit. Critics say the DWP is denying its role in the misdirection of tens of millions in taxpayers’ money every year, and the human misery it causes when it tries to recover it.
Related: ‘The real criminals are the DWP’: carer in custody after ‘brutal’ fraud prosecution
Questions remain as to why the DWP insists on prosecuting carers for overpayments caused by earnings breaches, even if they agree to repay the amounts. Key criteria for referral to the courts include the recoverable amount being over £5,000, evidence of premeditated or organized fraud and a previous conviction for benefit fraud.
A trail of court cases reported recently by local media suggests that many of the carer’s allowance fraud prosecutions are not clear cut. As the magistrate noted in one recent case involving the conviction of a carer for a £6,000 overpayment: “We think it was one of those things where it happened. [the earnings breach] having passed [by the carer].”
The problems with carer’s allowance have been known for two decades, so it seems strange for governments to say they want to encourage carers back into the labor market – and prevent employees from quitting their work completely when they start to care – that critics do not take full advantage of. this easily discourages part-time work, and often brutally punishes carers when they do try to work.
Professor Sue Yeandle, an expert on care and work at the University of Sheffield, called for a fundamental overhaul of the carer’s allowance, simplifying it and making it more generous. “The benefit of it that so many people hate is that it basically tells you that it’s poorly designed,” she said.
