Ministers are facing calls to abandon the “cruel and nonsensical” fines levied on tens of thousands of unpaid carers for unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week.
The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a centre-right thinktank, said the government should end the “persecution” of carers and accept that it was to blame for allowing overpayments to run up to huge sums, in some cases more than £20,000.
The Guardian has revealed that carers are being plunged into hardship after being forced to pay huge penalties over a benefits snag that the government promised to fix five years ago.
It can now also reveal that ministers are refusing to publish the findings of an official study into the emotional and financial impact of the fines, which have been called “appalling” and draconian.
Cristina Odone, the CSJ’s head of family policy, described the punishment as “cruel and nonsensical” and called for “wholesale reform” of the system.
“I’d like to hear [the Department for Work and Pensions] say that they are going to forget about the debts,” she said. “Rather than prosecute and persecute, they should say ‘we understand that these are honest mistakes, we have allowed them to accumulate and that’s our fault and therefore we will redeem them’.”
The breaches of carer’s allowance earnings limits – found by an MPs’ inquiry to be mostly carers’ “honest mistakes” involving small sums, rather than intentional fraud – has led to carers being forced to repay debts of thousands of pounds, prosecuted for fraud, and having homes and inheritances seized by the DWP.
The DWP should be able to identify when a carer’s earnings have exceeded the £151-a-week limit and notify them, but in many cases the government fails to do so, meaning people unwittingly rack up huge debts.
Nearly 30,000 people were told to repay sums relating to carer’s allowance earnings breaches in 2022-23. More than 800 were repaying sums of between £5,000 and £20,000, and 36 were repaying more than £20,000.
Odone said 90% of these would be “honest mistakes” by unpaid carers rather than intentional dishonesty. Carer’s allowance is a relatively modest benefit – it recently increased to £81.90 a week – and therefore does not often fall victim to fraud.
Helen Walker, the chief executive of Carers UK, said: “The overpayments case is indicative of a much wider issue about how unpaid carers are valued and treated by government and by society.
“A wholesale reform and review of carer’s allowance and other carers’ benefits is needed to ensure these adequately support unpaid carers during the time they spend caring for someone and so that the system does not punish them for misinterpreting complicated and harsh earnings rules.”
She said systems within DWP to deal with challenges faced by carers needed to be much better, and she called for the official study to be published.
Stephen Timms, the chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee, also called for the DWP to publish the study.
He said it was “deeply disappointing” that the DWP had not got a grip on carer’s allowance overpayments. “This report falls clearly into the category of ‘this should be published’,” he said.
MPs had demanded that the DWP commission the study after a 2019 MPs’ report accused the department of having “stuck its head in the sand and done nothing” to understand the human distress caused.
They had taken evidence from unpaid carers describing the impact of how being landed with unexpected debts of thousands of pounds and facing criminal prosecution – often on top of the stress of caring for loved ones – led to depression, suicidal thoughts and poverty.
In one case, a mother who gave up work to care for a parent with dementia was prosecuted for fraud by the DWP and told to repay £3,000 for what she said was an inadvertent breach of earnings limits. Her son was taken into care because she could not cope, she said, and her life was in a “downward spiral”.
Last October the then minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, said in a letter to MPs that the DWP had no plans to publish the study as it was still “reviewing the research results.”
Asked by the Guardian if it would publish the study, the DWP confirmed this was still the position. It said it had commissioned research on experiences of claiming and receiving carer’s allowance, including the impact of overpayments, and would continue to review the results as part of its wider policy thinking around the benefit.
The former justice secretary Robert Buckland told the Guardian that the DWP “shouldn’t be treating these carers as criminals”, adding: “It’s utterly repugnant and wrong.”
He said: “They need to accept they’ve made a mistake and accept the money is gone. Take it on the chin. The carers are going to be under immense pressure already and it’s not their fault. At the very least they [the DWP] could claw the money back over a long period of time so the carers aren’t put into immediate crisis. But it’s the DWP’s mistake so they should cover the lost money.”
About 6 million people in the UK are unpaid carers, devoting much of their lives – and often giving up full-time work – to look after partners and relatives who are disabled, frail or ill. About 1 million people who provide unpaid care for more than 35 hours a week claim £81.90 carer’s allowance, a non-means-tested benefit.
The devastating impact on carers of being confronted with demands to repay sums as large as £20,000 or face prosecution has been well documented by charities and academics who say falling foul of the system in this way can plunge carers into a “Kafkaesque mess”.
One carer, repaying £2,100 imposed for a minor earnings breach, said: “The experience pushed me into a deep depression, I lost weight, I couldn’t sleep. I’m a mum caring for my children and trying to work but I was scared I would go to prison. I’m still traumatised.”
Prof Sue Yeandle, an expert on care and work at Sheffield University, told MPs at a Commons hearing last month that overpayments penalties on carers were “outrageous” and left carers in an “almost Kafkaesque mess” they could not get out of. She urged ministers to waive demands for repayment where it could be shown the overpayment was not the fault of the carer.
She said: “Finding out that you owe money when you are already on a low income and you are struggling financially will be absolutely devastating for carers and it will push them from feeling that they are doing something valuable and important to just feeling absolutely bereft and totally devastated.”
