The problems caused by attempts to reclaim benefit payments to carers, on the basis that they are ineligible due to increased earnings, are not new. Between 19,000 and 39,000 overpayments have been logged in each of the last five years. But this only makes the latest details of the heavy-handed manner in which these situations are being dealt with all the more dismaying. It is past time that the Department for Work and Pensions’ flawed protocol was changed.
This is what was promised five years ago, when MPs issued a report on the hardship caused by overpayments. A new digital tool was supposed to detect rule breaches at an earlier stage to avoid a situation in which carers on low incomes were being landed with huge bills. Yet, far from improving a failing system, the DWP appears to have doubled down on its punitive approach. Vivienne Groom’s prosecution under the Proceeds of Crime Act is a particularly distressing case.
