Thursday, December 12, 2024
DWP imposing misery on carers
The paper says that more than 262,000 repayable overpayments totalling in excess of £325m were clawed back from carers who had – mostly unwittingly – fallen foul of carer’s allowance rules, while 600 carers were prosecuted and received criminal records after DWP civil servants referred their cases to the Crown Prosecution Service.
They add that campaigners have claimed that the National Audit Office (NAO) report highlights the scale of the misery and hardship inflicted on carers over the period as well as the extent of the failure by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to tackle overpayments:
A Guardian investigation this year revealed how Conservative ministers allowed overpayments to grow almost unchecked for years, despite senior officials promising MPs in 2019 that new data-matching technology would eradicate the problem.
There are currently more than 134,500 unpaid carers repaying overpayment debts of more than £251m after falling foul of “cliff-edge” rules on earnings limits. A carer who earned £1 more than the £151 threshold for 52 weeks would have to pay back not £52 but £4,258.80.
The NAO report revealed that staffing levels in the carer’s allowance processing unit were designed to meet internal financial savings targets rather than to ensure carers were prevented from inadvertently accruing overpayments.
As a result, only half the electronic alerts identifying potential benefit overpayments were investigated annually. The number of staff assigned to check alerts and investigate cases was cut by 14% over the past two years.
The DWP has repeatedly refused to accept that it has any responsibility to identify all earnings breaches or alert individuals to potential overpayments, arguing that in law the onus is on claimants to inform it of any changes that could affect their eligibility for carer’s allowance.
On average, family carers – most of whom are in poverty – ended up repaying nearly £1,000 in earnings-related overpayments last year, although the Guardian has revealed that since April two cases had accrued more than £20,000 in overpayments, suggesting the DWP failed to spot the breaches for nearly five years.
That so many family carers have been caught up in this scandal of the DWP’s own making is scandalous.
